It’s incredible to think of how different the movie industry would look right now if it wasn’t for the pandemic, with audiences still waiting on a huge number of titles that they should have seen a long time ago. The perfect example is No Time to Die, which isn’t releasing domestically until next week, eighteen months behind schedule.
Spare a thought for poor Top Gun: Maverick, though, which was first announced for the summer of 2019, but ended up being shunted all the way back to May 2022. When shooting on Matt Reeves’ The Batman began, the latest reboot for the Dark Knight was penciled in for June 2021, before optimistically finding itself pushed to October 1.
Then, it was hit with another delay to its current March 2022 bow, but fans haven’t forgotten. As you can see from the reactions below, some people were even happy to transport themselves to an alternate timeline where they’d finally gotten to see the movie on opening day.
On the plus side, it’s only two weeks until we get a brand new full-length trailer at DC FanDome, even if March 2022 feels like a long way away. Let’s hope that The Batman is more than worth the wait, after the cast and crew were forced to endure one of the longest and most tortured productions of the COVID-19 era.