Film industry banks on The Batman to mark start of ‘post-Covid’ cinema
The release of The Batman, starring Robert Pattinson, is being heralded as the beginning of an anticipated post-pandemic blockbuster boom, with UK box office sales forecast to double this year to top £1bn for the first time since 2019.
While Daniel Craig’s last outing as James Bond in No Time to Die provided the UK with its biggest October in box office history, and Spiderman: No Way Home, which launched in December as the Omicron variant hit, has taken more than $1.8bn (£1.4bn) to date to become the sixth biggest film of all time, both were released while Covid rules were in place or looming.
The Batman, by contrast, is being described as the first true post-pandemic blockbuster as many countries including the UK are now officially free of all coronavirus restrictions. The opening of the film in London on Friday marked the start of a return to the era of “normal” cinemagoing and will be closely watched to see if people’s habits will change.
“The huge success of Bond and Spiderman proved that cinema is back, but both did it within Covid when cinemagoing was not considered to be back to normal conditions,” says David Hancock, film analyst at Omdia.
“We will be judging Batman as the first ‘post-Covid film’, if you like, on its pure merits. The hesitancy to return to cinema and the rush when fans starved of big new releases were actually able to see one are now not factors. The question for Batman is simply, will people like it, and that is how films should be judged.”
Omdia is forecasting that the UK box office will hit about £1.1bn this year, about double the £557m of 2021, and almost four times the disastrous pandemic low of £297m in 2020. This would put it just 10% or so down on pre-pandemic 2019’s record £1.25bn.
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