Warner Bros. and DC's The Batman is just a little over one month away from hitting theaters, which means cinemas across the globe are preparing for the Robert Pattinson film's debut. Now, an IMAX theater in Australia may have revealed the official runtime for The Batman, and if true, fans are in for a lengthy adventure with the Caped Crusader.
The Batman director Matt Reeves has already stated that he and Pattinson intended to explore the psychological torment of The Dark Knight, and it appears they will be taking their time in examining such details. If the aforementioned IMAX theater's information proves to be correct, The Batman will be the longest film in the Caped Crusader's cinematic history to date.
According to IMAX Melbourne's listing for The Batman, The Dark Knight's latest film will have a runtime of 176 minutes, or two hours and 56 minutes. At nearly three hours long, this means that The Batman has a longer runtime than the current champ, Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises. As the conclusion to Nolan's Batman trilogy, The Dark Knight Rises ran at 2 hours and 45 minutes in order to cover enough ground to bring the journey of Christian Bale's Bruce Wayne to an end.
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As far as runtimes go, Rises is just ahead of its predecessor The Dark Knight, which clocks in at 2 hours and 32 minutes. In third place, at least until The Batman runtime is officially confirmed, is Zack Snyder's Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Although the end credits factor into the lengthy runtimes of these most recent Batman films, even then they still run longer than Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher's entries in the franchise, which each clocked in at roughly the standard two hours.
As The Batman trailer showed, Reeves' entry in the franchise has a lot of story to tell and several characters to explore. In addition to the mysteries presented by Paul Dano's the Riddler, Pattinson's Caped Crusader will take on criminal kingpin's like Colin Farrell's Penguin and John Turturro's Carmine Falcone. Plus, there's also the complicated partnership between Batman and Zoe Kravitz's Catwoman to examine.
A nearly three-hour runtime for The Batman should satisfy fans who believe superhero films often sacrifice character development for spectacle. If IMAX Melbourne is correct, it appears The Batman will have plenty of time for both.
The Batman is scheduled to be released in theaters on March 4, 2022.
Source: IMAX Melbourne