Origin movies always have a much more difficult time seizing their audience’s attention, especially since a sizable chunk of the first act must usually be dedicated to setting up the world and its characters. The Batman will regretfully prove no exception to this rule, and based on new evidence; it seems that Matt Reeves’ reboot will run for nearly three hours.
The Batman will introduce a new version of the Caped Crusader to the live-action medium. Twilight alum Robert Pattinson is set to portray this particular iteration of Bruce Wayne, and the story will be set in an altogether different Gotham. All of this will obviously take time to introduce in the context of the movie, so this particular Dark Knight film might end up having a different structure to your run-of-the-mill superhero film.
As for how long all of this takes to unfold, the official IMAX website for Melbourne has put up the new flick in its catalog, showing a runtime of 176 minutes for The Batman. Of course, the website doesn’t specify if this includes previews and other sneak peeks that usually take up quite a few minutes in IMAX screenings.
Even if we take that out of the equation, The Batman will still have a runtime of approximately two and a half hours, if not more. That’s not really unreasonable considering all the things that the movie has to go through to set up the narrative, but it might still be more than what many of us initially assumed.
That is if there’s any credibility to the aforementioned website. We Got This Covered has reached out to Warner Bros. for a comment, and we’ll update the story if we hear back.
Update Jan. 20, 2:13pm CST: The Hollywood Reporter confirms the movie runs two hours and 55 minutes, including eight minutes of credits.