Warner Bros. Pictures and DC Studios have delayed THE BATMAN – PART II again, pushing the release from Oct. 1, 2027, to Feb. 18, 2028, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
“Matt is committed to making the best film he possibly can, and no one can accurately guess exactly how long a script will take to write,” DC Studios co-chief James Gunn said, defending director Matt Reeves after an earlier bump moved the sequel from 2026 to 2027. Gunn’s larger point still holds now that the release has slipped again: big sequels take time, and this one just took a little more.
This marks the sequel’s third release date bump since it was announced in 2022, after an original Oct. 3, 2025 target got scuttled by the 2023 writers’ and actors’ strikes. Warner Bros. is now slotting PART II into the same four-day holiday corridor that made the original THE BATMAN a hit in 2022, when it opened to $134 million domestically and grossed $770.3 million worldwide.
Robert Pattinson returns as Bruce Wayne, joined again by Andy Serkis, Colin Farrell and Scarlett Johansson. The studio reshuffled its whole 2027 slate around the move — J.J. Abrams’ THE GREAT BEYOND now fills the October 2027 date THE BATMAN – PART II II vacated, while Sam Esmail’s PANIC CAREFULLY and New Line’s REVENGE OF LA LLORONA simply swapped release dates with each other.
Here’s the thing worth saying plainly. If Reeves and company are taking extra time to perfect PART II, they’d do well to spend some of it scrubbing the script.
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THE BATMAN piled up more than 35 strong profanities the first time around, according to Movieguide®’s review of the 2022 movie, including 21 uses of Jesus’ name as a curse word and 10 GD profanities on top of dozens of obscenities. That’s a lot of ugly language wrapped around a story that, underneath it, actually had something to say.
“THE BATMAN also has a strong redemptive, morally uplifting worldview where justice, hope, goodness, faith, and redemption overcome vengeance, political corruption and criminal behavior,” Movieguide®’s review noted. The bones of a genuinely good story were there. They just came buried under language that didn’t need to be in the movie at all.
Movieguide® made this same case back in 2024, the last time the sequel’s date moved, arguing that if Gunn and Reeves want the follow-up to succeed, “they should ditch the profanities that marred the otherwise redemptive first movie.” Two delays later, that advice still stands, and the studio now has more time than ever to take it.
Hollywood already has proof that a Batman movie can lean hard into redemption without leaning on shock value. THE DARK KNIGHT RISES, the closing chapter of Christopher Nolan’s trilogy, earned four out of four stars from Movieguide®, which praised it as “an awesome, redemptive epic” where “villains are transformed, people find hope and faith, and good is victorious.”
That trilogy went on to gross more than $2.4 billion worldwide combined, becoming one of the most successful and acclaimed franchises superhero movies have ever produced. Redemption sold tickets then, and there’s no reason it can’t do the same for Gotham’s next chapter.
With more than a year and a half left until PART II reaches Imax screens, Reeves and Warner Bros. have all the runway they need to make sure the movie’s message matches its mouth.
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