somebody analysts are saying that this was a better than
expected opening. It seemed like many people were pretty
surprised by these numbers. What's your take on it
? Yeah, absolutely jennifer um definitely some really,
really strong numbers from the batman. I mean everybody
was kind of looking at this, this was really
the big litmus test for 2022. Obviously we had
that huge blockbuster with you know, the Spiderman movie
at the end of last year, but, but
we really kind of needed, we, we,
I think, you know, the whole industry kind
of really needed to know whether that was a one
off or whether you know this, the theatrical fare
or theatrical exhibition and especially superhero movies, a Dc
comics movie would have that drawing power. And I
think the Bad man absolutely exceeded expectations and this was
particularly important because remember this is, this was first
of all, it was a really long film,
it was a three hour long film. Um you
know, it's, it's a slightly dark, intense
kind of a gritty, more like a film noir
, so it's not exactly suitable for kids, but
just kind of, you know, given all of
that, I think the movie absolutely performed really well
. And of course you had a new leading man
and robert Pattinson. Yeah, totally. So there's
already a lot of that excitement about the movie itself
. Um, but then when you put in all
of these other elements that you just mentioned, it
seems like a lot of people were going out to
the theaters and just from what I heard, it
seemed like people were packing the theater. So it
seems like fans relationship to the movies in the theater
experience maybe finally getting back to normal. Do you
think it's too early to say that? Um I
definitely think that um you know, this was,
this should definitely give theaters a lot of optimism,
a lot of confidence because what they've been saying all
along is, you know, don't go for the
day and date strategy because it kind of really then
dilutes the performance of some of these big blockbusters um
and so it's going to be interesting and I think
it's still pretty much early to say, but this
obviously is a very, very positive data point.
I think what it does for more studios of course
, for Warner, they've committed to a theatrical windows
throughout this year, but it also encourages studios with
big releases. Think of a Disney or so many
other studios to actually, you know, put their
movies out in the theaters for, you know,
exclusively, so not putting it on their streaming platforms
at the same time. Yeah, and you mentioned
Disney, geetha this weekend, they have a movie
coming out turning red apparently exclusively on streaming. So
do you think Disney maybe is still sticking to this
or maybe are they going to reconsider considering how well
the batman did. So I think Disney is kind
of going on a case by case basis. I
think with turning red and some of the other Pixar
movies, uh you know, which are more kid
friendly and you know, appeal to their Disney plus
audience. They really want to give, they want
to have that flexibility and they want to be able
to kind of show it directly on their streaming service
. Uh you know, they did try something last
year with encounter where they first put it out in
theaters, but for some reason, you know,
the demand was just not there, but the moment
they put it on their Disney plus service. Uh
you know, it just took off in a,
in a huge, huge way. And so I
think with Children, what what we're seeing is,
you know, parents might be a little bit more
reluctant to kind of take them to, to the
theaters. And so it might make sense for Disney
to put, you know, kid friendly fare on
the streaming service. Having said that though, all
of their theatrical releases, I mean all of their
blockbuster movies, I still think that they are going
to put them in theaters exclusively and we're gonna,
you know, have a huge uh, you know
, slate from them. I think of Doctor Strange
or thor or Light here. All of these are
big, big movies that, you know, the
industry is looking forward to from Disney for this year
. And what about the next big film that could
potentially knock the batman off? I was reading that
the batman might be able to sort of stay at
the top of the box office for a few weeks
. What's the next big title that could knock it
off though? I think the whole of March,
I think the batman should pretty much stay on top
. The next big movie that we have coming out
is morbius. It's a Sony release that comes out
on the first of april. So really, I
think that the batman has huge staying power here.