‘The Batman Part II’ Delay Comes with a Silver Lining for J.J. Abrams’ ‘The Great Beyond’

Warner Bros. has pushed back the releases of both Matt Reeves‘ “The Batman Part II” and the next film from director J.J. Abrams, “The Great Beyond.” “The Batman” sequel now moves back five months to February 18, 2028, and “The Great Beyond” moves nearly a full year into the slot vacated by “The Batman Part II,” October 1, 2027.

Fans have been lamenting the delays on “The Batman Part II” for some time, as it will now be a six-year gap between the two films. Production on the film didn’t begin until early this year, a delay of five months, and studio sources explain this new release date gives Reeves more time to work on the film in post-production. Reeves did, however, tease the new date with a rainy camera test of star Robert Pattinson as the Dark Knight, which you can watch here.

But this date shift is also being positioned as a sign of confidence in “The Great Beyond,” an original sci-fi film and Abrams’ first movie in over a decade. Though the film was already meant to be released in IMAX later this year, the new release date now secures for it a two-week run in IMAX 70mm, the format in which Christopher Nolan filmed “The Odyssey” and will screen the movie this weekend. Facilitating that requires some additional lead time for print production.

Had “The Great Beyond” opened this November, it would’ve been up against “Godzilla Minus Zero” the week prior and the new “Hunger Games” film the week after. Warner Bros. also has a big Oscar contender it will likely be pushing with the Tom Cruise vehicle “Digger” opening this fall. Now, “The Great Beyond” has a fairly wide berth in 2027, and it’s being released in a window when Warner Bros. has previously released movies like “Joker,” “Gravity,” the first “Dune,” “Argo,” and more.

Warner Bros. also sees “The Batman Part II” date shift as being closer to the same release window as the original “The Batman,” which made $772 million worldwide at the box office, and it is now opening on a four-day weekend with the President’s Day Holiday. This year, Warner Bros. opened “Wuthering Heights” in that window and saw some success.

Also moving on Wednesday as part of this date shuffle are two films swapping places, Sam Esmail’s “Panic Carefully” and “Revenge of La Llorona,” the former of which now opens April 9, 2027, and the latter which now opens February 26, 2027.

As part of its CinemaCon presentation, Warner Bros. screened footage from “The Great Beyond,” but nothing from “The Batman Part II.” We described Abrams’ film as having an “Amblin-esque feel, not unlike his ‘Super 8’ film, but on a much bigger scale.” Abrams said on stage that the film is about “reconnecting with that sense of wonder and possibility we had when we were kids.” It stars Glen Powell, Jenna Ortega, Emma Mackey, Sophie Okonedo, Merritt Wever, and Samuel L. Jackson. Abrams is doing it all this time — writing, directing, producing, and even, for the first time, composing the original score.