The Batman Release Date Delayed Again

After pushing back the upcoming Matt Reeves‘ feature film by a few months previously, Warner Bros. Pictures has delayed the release date for The Batman even further. The film was originally scheduled to be released on June 25, 2021 and was delayed until October 1, 2021 after production was forced to stop during the coronavirus pandemic. Now the film will arrive even later with the studio putting it at March 4, 2022. Warner Bros. didn’t give an explicit reason for the latest delay in the film’s release, but the ever shifting release schedule and star Robert Pattinson previously testing positive for COVID-19 were certainly the main factors.

Pattinson stars as the titular Dark Knight in the new movie which also includes Paul Dano as The Riddler; Zoe Kravitz as Catwoman; Colin Farrell as The Penguin; John Turturro as Carmine Falcone; Jeffrey Wright as the GCPD’s James Gordon; Peter Sarsgaard as Gotham D.A. Gil Colson; Jayme Lawson as mayoral candidate Bella Reál; and Andy Serkis as Alfred.

Speaking at DC FanDome, Matt Reeves referred to this film as showing the character of Bruce Wayne “learning how to be Batman,” calling the entire film an experiment.

He continued, “The idea is that we’re in Year Two. It’s the Gotham experiment, it’s a criminal… experiment he’s trying to figure out what he can do that can finally change this place. In our story, he’s in that mode that’s where you meet him and you see that he is charting what he’s doing and it seems that he’s not having any of the effect that he wants to have yet and that is when the murders start to happen and then the murders begin to describe sort of the history of Gotham in a way that only reinforces what he knows about constant. It opens up a whole new world of corruption that went much farther.”

Warner Bros. is clearly betting big on Reeves’ plans for The Batman as a series order has been given to a Gotham PD spinoff TV series which will air on HBO Max. Reeves will collaborate with Terrence Winter (Boardwalk Empire) which “will be set in the world Reeves is creating for the feature film” and will provide “an unprecedented opportunity to extend the world established in the movie and further explore the myriad of compelling and complex characters of Gotham.” It’s rumored that Jeffrey Wright will reprise his role of Jim Gordon for the show.