'The Batman' Reigns At US Box Office With $120M Opening Weekend

“The Batman” overwhelmed the U.S. box office this weekend, ratcheting up $128.5 million in ticket sales from 4,417 screens.

What Happened: The $200 million, nearly three-hour superhero epic from AT&T’s T Warner Bros. division had the second best U.S. opening weekend since the pandemic began – only Sony Pictures’ SONY “Spider-Man: No Way Home” had a more dramatic premiere when it absorbed $260 million for its opening weekend in December.

“The Batman” torpedoed Sony’s “Uncharted,” which held the top box office spot for the last two weekends. That film took in $11 million over the weekend from 3,875 screens.

Rounding out the top five grossing films were United Artists Releasing’s “Dog,” with $6 million from 3,507 theaters in its third week of theatrical release; “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” with $4.4 million from 2,709 theaters in its 12th week on the big screen; and Walt Disney Co.’s DIS “Death on the Nile,” which scooped up $2.7 million from 2,565 venues for its fourth week in theatrical release.

What Happens Next: It would seem the major studios are giving “The Batman” enough space to absorb as much box office revenue as possible, as the only notable motion pictures opening in the coming weekend are smaller films in limited release from independent companies. These include “Tyson’s Run” from Collide Distribution, a family-friendly drama about an autistic teen who becomes focused on being a marathon runner, and the Australian-lensed “Gold” from Madman Entertainment with Zac Efron as a prospector guarding an enormous gold nugget in a hostile desert.

Also opening are Saban Films’ “The Exorcism of God” starring Will Beinbrink as an American priest in Mexico with a dark secret involving a botched exorcism, and “I Am Here” from Blue Fox Entertainment, an award-winning documentary on 98-year-old Ella Blumenthal, a Holocaust survivor who built a new life for herself in South Africa.

What Else Happened: Mick Jagger and Brad Pitt are almost never mentioned together in the same sentence, but back in the 1990s actor/filmmaker Ben Stiller and writer/directed Judd Apatow proposed making a big screen comedy that paired the photogenic Hollywood star with Jagger and his Rolling Stones comrades.

In an interview on Howard Stern’s SiriusXM SIRI talk show, Stiller blamed himself for the project never getting made, admitting that he is "not good at pitching stuff." Of course, the concept regarding the antics of Stones-obsessed music fans was not the most remarkable idea. But while Jagger and Pitt were welcoming to the plan, the other members of the Stones nixed it.

"The idea probably wouldn't have worked in execution because people would have just wanted to see a Rolling Stones concert film," Stiller admitted. "You wanna see a comedy? You see a comedy. You wanna see a concert film? You see a concert film."

Photo: Poster art for "The Batman" starring Robert Pattinson, courtesy of Warner Bros.