It hasn’t exactly been an easy road to the big screen for The Batman, which was recently delayed for a second time after Warner Bros. shifted Dune from December of this year to the October 2021 date originally occupied by Matt Reeves’ reboot. The Dark Knight will now return to our screens in March 2022, unless of course the domino effect caused by the Coronavirus pandemic continues for a while yet.
The Batman has been so long coming, in fact, that by the time it lands in theaters, it will have been seven and a half years since the project was first announced with Ben Affleck attached to star, direct, co-write and executive produce, which just goes to show the seismic changes that the DCEU has undergone since that fateful October of 2014 when Green Lantern Corps and Cyborg were also confirmed along with The Flash, which was delayed again as well and now won’t arrive until November 2022.
Of course, the production has already faced two shutdowns as a result of the pandemic, the second of which saw star Robert Pattinson test positive for COVID-19, and now it’s time put on your tinfoil hat because the latest rumor making the rounds is a conspiracy theory of the highest order. According to YouTuber Doomcock, who has a track record for making wildly unsubstantiated claims about major blockbusters, that wasn’t the real reason that Warner Bros. put the brakes on The Batman the second time around.
Rather, this new report claims that the whole thing is an elaborate ruse to cover up the fact that Pattinson has actually been incredibly difficult to work with and returned to the set completely out of shape, getting sent home by his director after spending the entire summer doing nothing to maintain his fitness levels, with the COVID-19 story simply concocted as a diversion.
Suffice it to say, take this one with an industrial helping of salt. But even if it’s way off the mark, it wouldn’t surprise us to learn that there’s still some sort of trouble brewing behind the scenes.
