Comic book adaptations generally don’t come cheap when spectacle is a requisite part of the genre, but throwing a ton of money at any given project is far from a guarantee of quality.
Warner Bros. plowed $300 million into the theatrical edition of Justice League, which was panned by critics and didn’t turn a penny of profit, while Joker made over a billion dollars against production costs of $55 million before finding plenty of awards season glory, even though Warner Bros. didn’t really want to make it in the first place.
Buried in a recent report from Deadline is the information that Matt Reeves’ The Batman reportedly cost $100 million, which is positively thrifty by the standards of the genre. In fact, not only does that make it the cheapest movie starring the Dark Knight since Batman Forever, but it’s one of the least expensive DC Comics adaptations of the modern era.
If that figure is on point, then The Batman came in at a lower budget than every single one of the company’s live-action movies made in the last quarter of a century bar Shaquille O’Neal’s dismal Steel, the equally terrible Jonah Hex, Joker and Birds of Prey, with Halle Berry’s infamous Catwoman and Shazam! also sitting on the $100 million threshold.
Published: Oct 24, 2021 05:34 am