Los Angeles, Jan 11: Warner Media CEO Jason Kilar has reassured fans that Matt Reeves’ highly anticipated “The Batman” will be released on the given date.
Due to the spread of Omicron, Sony has pushed its comic book tentpole “Morbius” from January to April, and Disney announced that its Pixar title “Turning Red” will skip theaters in March and head straight to Disney Plus.
As such many movie goers have wondered if “The Batman’s” release is safe. Kilar told Puck News that Warner Bros. is keeping its eye on the pandemic, but no delay is currently in the cards.
“We’re certainly paying attention to everything going on with Omicron,” Kilar said. “We feel good about the date right now. We’re gonna watch it day by day.”
“The Batman” — starring Robert Pattinson and Zoe Kravitz — will have an exclusive 45-day theatrical window before it’s made available to stream on HBO Max.
All of the studio’s 2021 movies, including “The Matrix Resurrections” and “Dune,” debuted in theaters at the same time while simultaneously streaming on HBO Max for their first 31 days of release.
Kilar said the studio “took understandable heat from a number of people” but the decision paid off, as HBO Max beat forecasts and ended 2021 with 73.8 million subscribers.
“It’s hard to argue; we made the right decision,” Kilar told Puck News. “We served the customers, the fans. We partnered with theatres; we were the only ones to provide 18 theatrical features with full marketing spends and full global theatrical releases. And we worked with our [talent] participants to make sure they were taken care of.”
In a recent interview on Vox’s “Recode” podcast, Kilar celebrated Warner Bros.’ new 45-day theatrical window. “I feel really, really good knowing that ‘The Batman,’ ‘Black Adam,’ ‘The Flash,’ ‘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,” he said. “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,” Kilar added. “‘The Batman’ is going to show up on day 46 on HBO Max. That is a huge change from where things were in 2018, 2017, 2016.”
“The Batman” is currently scheduled to open in theatres on March 4, and will debut on HBO Max on April 19. Also, no changes to the release date have yet been announced.
