The Batman is flying high on HBO Max. The Matt Reeves reboot starring Robert Pattinson as the DC Comics superhero scored a strong first-day streaming premiere on the Warner Bros. Discovery streaming service, where The Batman has been streaming free for subscribers since April 18. According to the smart television measurement firm Samba TV, which measures streaming viewership in smart TV terrestrial households that tuned in for at least five minutes, 720K U.S. households streamed The Batman on the first day it was available on HBO Max.
Samba previously reported the total weekend viewership numbers of recent DC movies Wonder Woman 1984, Zack Snyder’s Justice League, and The Suicide Squad in their first three days online. 2.2 million HBO Max households tuned in for at least five minutes of WW84 over Christmas weekend 2020; 1.8 million watched the Snyder Cut over its first four days in March 2021; and 2.8 million U.S. households streamed the day-and-date release The Suicide Squad in its opening weekend last summer.
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The Batman opened March 4 with an exclusive 45-day window in theaters, grossing $752 million globally to become the so far highest-grossing film of 2022. It’s the first DC movie since 2020’s Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey to have an exclusive theatrical run.
Though the company has since recommitted to the theatrical window — doing away with the controversial day-and-date method that made movies like Godzilla vs. Kong and Space Jam: A New Legacy available to stream on their first day in theaters — former WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar recently touted the approach that brought Batman to HBO Max after just six weeks in theaters.
“I feel really, really good knowing that The Batman, and Black Adam, and The Flash, and Elvis, and a whole host of other movies, are literally going to be showing up on day 46 on HBO Max in a variety of territories all over the world,” Kilar told Vox’s Recode in January. “That is a very, very big change that I don’t think people appreciate, and I feel really good about it.”
“Think about when movies would show up on HBO, which is eight to nine months after theatrical premiere. The Batman is going to show up on day 46 on HBO Max,” Kilar said at the time. “That is a huge change from where things were in 2018, 2017, 2016.”
The Batman is now streaming on HBO Max and will be available to own on 4K UHD and Blu-ray on May 24. If you haven’t signed up for HBO Max yet, you can try it out here.
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Image Courtesy of Warner Bros. Discovery
