Released: March 3, 2022

Directed By:   Matt Reeves

Screenplay By:   Matt Reeves, Peter Craig

Stars:  Robert Pattinson, Zoë Kravitz, Paul Dano, Jeffrey Wright, John Turturro, Peter Sarsgaard, Andy Serkis, Colin Farrell

Plot:   When the Riddler, a sadistic serial killer, begins murdering key political figures in Gotham, Batman is forced to investigate the city’s hidden corruption and question his family’s involvement.

How did this movie do
Budget: $185 Million

• In case that the casting of Robert Pattinson didn’t work out, the studio looked at Nicholas Hoult for the role of Bruce Wayne/Batman.
  
  
• Matt Reeves stated that in the audition, he knew Pattinson was gonna be his Batman the moment he put on the black eye makeup in front of the mirror in the screentest.

• Director Matt Reeves wrote the script with Robert Pattinson in mind, not even knowing if he would ever want to be in the movie. After watching Pattinson’s performance in Good Time (2017) and becoming captivated by him, Reeves started to imagine Pattinson in the role at a certain point as he was writing. Pattinson was Reeves top choice because he was “always that version of what I saw in the page. I think of Bruce Wayne as this recluse rockstar in a decaying manor. There’s this part of me that so saw Rob [Pattinson] as that & I had no idea that he would be interested in playing the role at all. I thought what if Rob doesn’t want to play Batman? This would be a disaster”. But Reeves didn’t know that at the same time, Pattinson became fixated on the role of Batman without even knowing the status of the project. Around that time in 2018, Pattinson and The Batman producer Dylan Clark had a general meeting about potential collaborations, with no specific project in mind. Clark: “We’re talking about 20 different things. And then he [Pattinson] starts kind of saying, ‘So what’s going on with Batman?'”. After Reeves finished the script 8 months later, he finally met with Pattinson, who still didn’t know that Reeves wrote the role with him in mind: “I had to kind of try to imagine what he’d written, and I hadn’t even read the script. I’d come with this pad full of notes.”
  
  
• Zoë Kravitz and Robert Pattinson received the same advice from the predecessors of their respective roles (Michelle Pfeiffer and Christian Bale respectively): make sure you can go to the bathroom while in costume.
  
  
• Matt Reeves stated that his version of the Riddler was partly inspired by the infamous serial killer Zodiac who operated in California in the late 1960s.
  
  
• Matt Reeves cites the Batman comics “Batman: Ego”, “Batman: Year One” and “Batman: The Long Halloween” as influences on the film.
  
  
• Robert Pattinson revealed while screen testing for the role, he sneakily took a selfie in the batsuit as a memento “just in case it didn’t work out.”
  
  
• Matt Reeves describes this version of Batman as a mix between detective story, action movie and psychological thriller.
  
  
• It was confirmed early on that Robert Pattinson signed a three picture deal with Warner Bros., meaning this is to be the first film of a new Batman trilogy. This will be the second Batman trilogy ever, following Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy.
  
  
• The last two punches in the train station scene where the victim is already unconscious and Batman says “I’m vengeance!” were Pattinson’s idea and improvised: “I wanted to say it as the guy is losing consciousness so it goes into his dreams…I really wanted his future to be really really damaged.”
  
  
• Robert Pattinson’s Bruce Wayne is inspired by Kurt Cobain. Writer/director Matt Reeves was listening to Nirvana when he wrote the first act: “That’s when it came to me that, rather than make Bruce Wayne the playboy version we’ve seen before, there’s another version who had gone through a great tragedy and became a recluse. Kurt Cobain had a relationship with fame, where being famous was not his goal. He loved music, but the idea of being famous for music was a double edged sword for him. And that made me think of Rob Pattinson, actually. Because Rob is a very private person himself and doesn’t necessary like the part of being recognized everywhere as an actor.”
  
  
• Matt Reeves stated that Colin Farrell’s Penguin takes inspiration from the character ‘Fredo’ from The Godfather (1972).
  
  
• The movie’s working title was ‘Vengeance’.
  
  
• Colin Farrell stated that he went to Starbucks to try out his prosthetics and makeup for the Penguin for the first time. Nobody recognized him despite getting a couple of stares from people.
  
  
• When Ben Affleck was set to star and direct, the villain of the film would have been Deathstroke played by Joe Manganiello and the screenplay would have prominently featured Arkham Asylum. Matt Reeves had actually enjoyed the original script that Ben Affleck had been preparing, comparing it to a James Bond film. However, he opted not to use it as he wanted to make a more noir, detective driven story.
  
  
• Colin Farrell wears makeup and a fat suit for his role of the Penguin. The facial prosthetics were composed of six distinct pieces. In order to ensure there were no visible seams, crew members would shine harsh flashlights in his face before approving him to go to set.
  
  
• Matt Reeves about the Batmobile: “I liked the idea of the car itself as a horror figure, making an animalistic appearance to really scare the hell out of the people Batman’s pursuing. There is absolutely a horror-genre aspect to this movie.”
  
  
• It was Zoë Kravitz’s idea for Catwoman to have long and scary nails without nail polish on them, so they looked more like claws.
  
  
• Robert Pattinson and Zoë Kravitz both worked on the fight choreography months before and every day during the whole shoot.
  
  
• A scene in this movie and the “Hit me!” scene in The Dark Knight (2008) were shot in the same street in Chicago; in S LaSalle Street/W Marble Place facing the Chicago Board of Trade Building.
  
  
• Robert Pattinson and Zoë Kravitz have been friends for a decade before they got cast. Matt Reeves said because of that, the two already had great chemistry and a natural connection right from the beginning of the shoot. Pattinson and Kravitz appeared very early on in Reeves head as he was writing the screenplay.
  
  
• Matt Reeves cites the work of Batman artist Francesco Francavilla as an influence on the film’s design (film-noirish and distinctly low-tech).
  
  
• Filming began in January 2020 in London and was put on hold on March 25, 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. After a 5 month hiatus, shooting began again in late August 2020. After three days, filming was again suspended on September 3, after Robert Pattinson allegedly tested positive for COVID-19. After Pattinson was cleared to return, shooting resumed on September 17, 2020 and finally wrapped on March 12, 2021 — 14 months after principal photography initially began.
  
  
• Robert Pattinson on his Batman: “Bruce is obsessed in being Batman. He has no desire being Bruce and he wants to just throw it away. For him, being Batman is like a strange kind of therapy. He thinks this is the way he can save himself, by living in this kind of Zen state as Batman, where it’s just pure instinct and no emotional baggage. It feels like he has a death wish going out at night. I always get the impression that he wants to keep recreating the night when his parents died. In his mind, every single person he is fighting is the person who killed his parents.”
  
  
• Robert Pattinson stated that before playing scenes as Bruce, he would prepare himself by listening to either heavy metal or classical music, especially symphonies, like those of Bach and Wagner.
  
  
• Influence for the tone of The Batman was the comic Batman: Year One. Influence for Selina and Batman’s relationship was Klute (1971). Influences for the plot were Chinatown (1974) and All the President’s Men (1976). Influence for Batman’s Psychology was the comic Batman: Ego. Other influences were Mindhunter (book), The French Connection, Taxi Driver, Last Days, The Long Halloween, and Zero Year.
  
  
• In Wayne Manor, there is a pedestal with a William Shakespeare bust on top. This is a reference to the original Batman (1966) series where a similar Shakespeare bust was used as a device to trigger the opening to the Batcave.
  
  
• At 175 minutes, this film is the longest Batman film to date and the third longest comic book movie, behind Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021) and Avengers: Endgame (2019).
  
  
• Colin Farrell revealed his son was ‘utterly horrified’ at the sight of his transformation into Penguin during production: “When my kid saw me for the first time, he was utterly horrified. I have it on iPhone. He was horrified.”
  
  
• While writing the script, Matt Reeves knew he wanted Robert Pattinson for the role after seeing his performance in Good Time (2017): “In that movie you could really feel that he’s got an inner kind of rage that connects with this character and a dangerousness, and I could feel this desperation. He also got that Kurt Cobain thing, where he looks like a rock star, but you also feel like he could be a recluse. And I became dead-set on it being Rob. I had no idea if Rob had any interest!”
  
  
• At one point in the movie, Penguin refers to the Batman as “Zorro.” In many versions of Batman’s origins, the Wayne family was leaving a theater showing of Zorro when they were murdered. Zorro was acknowledged by Bob Kane and Bill Finger as one of the main influences for Batman.
  
  
• Colin Farrell stated that a recording of a NYC building caretaker from the 1980s inspired him for the voice of Penguin.
  
  
• Zoë Kravitz is the third African American actress to play Catwoman in live action after Eartha Kitt in Batman (1966) and Halle Berry in Catwoman (2004).
  
  
• Zoë Kravitz had previously voiced the character of Catwoman in The Lego Batman Movie (2017).
  
  
• The first solo Batman film to be shot on digital.
  
  
• The film was originally scheduled to release on June 25th, 2021 but due to the impact of COVID-19, production was halted and the release pushed to October 1st, 2021. On October 5th, 2020 Warner Bros. delayed the film to March 4th, 2022.
  
  
• The first live-action Batman film to not feature any scenes shot with IMAX cameras since Batman Begins (2005).
  
  
• Released in the 30th anniversary year of Batman Returns (1992), which also features Catwoman and The Penguin.
  
  
• The first portrayal of Commissioner Gordon as an African-American.
  
  
• When shooting began again after months of lockdown due to Covid-19 and Pattinson tested positive after only one day back on set, director Matt Reeves didn’t want to risk getting Covid, too and transformed himself on set into “a burrito,” wearing a mask, gloves, a head covering and scuba diving goggles.
  
  
• When Riddler is caught by police in a corner diner, law enforcement find several identification cards on his person. One of them says “Edward Nashton” referencing the New Earth version of The Riddler who would eventually go on to change his name to Edward Nygma. Another ID card says “Patrick Parker” which is an alias that the villain has also used in the comics.
  
  
• Commissioner Pete Savage is a reference to the 1966 Batman TV show in an episode entitled “An Egg Grows in Gotham” there’s a character named Pete Savage who is a descendant of one of the three families who founded Gotham City.
  
  
• Batman’s full real name is Bruce Thomas Wayne. Robert Pattinson ‘s middle name is also Thomas. The creators of the Batman comics stated that Bruce Wayne’s first name came from Robert Bruce, the Scottish patriot.
  
  
• Peter Sarsgaard is the husband of Maggie Gyllenhaal, who portrayed Rachel Dawes in The Dark Knight (2008) (edited This is the second DC movie Peter has acted in, the first was Green Lantern (2011) where he played Hector who inadvertently absorbed the powers of Parallax)
  
  
• To allow Reeves and Pattinson to communicate on the set across the self-imposed COVID barriers between them, they were both outfitted with earpieces and microphones.
  
  
• Barry Keoghan plays the Joker in a very brief appearance towards the end of the movie.
  
  
• Jeffrey Wright appeared in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013) with Lenny Kravitz, the father of his co-star in this film Zoë Kravitz.
  
  
• The film was set to release in Russia, but was later pulled from the theatres of the state due to its ongoing battle with Ukraine and the alleged war crimes.
  
  
• Bruce is shown out of costume during daylight, but doing Batman stuff on a motorcycle, hiding his face with a helmet and scarf (and wearing eyeshade), akin to Batman: Year One where he made a point of never wearing the Batsuit except at night.
  
  
• Robert Pattinson is the second British actor to play a live action Batman, after Christian Bale, in Batman Begins(2005).
  
  
• Police commissioner Pete Savage is a mixture of Gillian Loeb (his rank, association with criminals and fat appearance) and Harvey Bullock (his scruffy-looking appearance, taking bribes from criminals and his distrust of Batman).
  
  
• An unmasked Bruce wearing black eyeshade, referencing the previously non-diegetic makeup in previous live-action Batman films used to blend his skin into the mask, which would just disappear once he unmasked.
  
  
• The scene where the Riddler is arrested at the diner takes some inspiration from the opening scene of Batman: Arkham Knight.
  
  
• The movie uses the villains Riddler, Penguin, and Catwoman which were three of the four villains from Batman: The Movie which Matt Reeves cited being a fan of as a kid. The fourth villain, the Joker, appears in a cameo at the end.
  
  
• The news reporter that The Riddler references, and who Thomas Wayne is accused of ordering the death of, has the last name “Elliot”. Thomas Elliot, in the comics, becomes the killer known as “Hush” whose father was unable to be saved by Dr. Thomas Wayne. The movie even has the word “Hush” over a picture of Elliot when talking about the hush money he refused from Thomas Wayne possibly hinting at his son appearing in the future to exact revenge on Bruce for the sins of his father.
  
  
• The green substance Batman/Bruce Wayne injects in himself in order to save Selina (which causes him to seemingly grow more powerful) bears a striking similarity to the drug “Venom” that the DC character Bane uses to increase his ferocity and strength.
  
  
• Film stars several actors who previously worked on Marvel comics adaptations – Zoe in Xmen First Class. Jeffrey Wright in What If. Andy Serkis in Black Panther, Avengers Age of Ultron. Barry Keoghan unseen Arkham inmate in Eternals. Train passenger who was attacked in Falcon & Winter Soldier