'The Batman Part II' Notches Another Year Delay
Warner Bros. inserts a Alejandro González Iñárritu-Tom Cruise collab in its place
The space between 2022’s The Batman, its HBO spinoff miniseries The Penguin from this fall, and its sequel just got a lot more uneven. Or less even. Whichever. Warner Bros. has made a post-Christmas release schedule adjustment that most notably sees the DC Elseworld delay said sequel’s release another year from October 2, 2026 to October 1, 2027.
It’s “another year” because this latest one makes an exact two year delay from its originally-set release date of October 3, 2025. The new date was already previously flagged for a DC release. News of this delay comes just two weeks after a DC Universe-set Clayface film written by Mike Flanagan was scheduled for just three weeks prior, September 11, 2026. While the 2025 date is now held by Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride! which stars Christian Bale, Jesse Buckley, Peter Sarsgaard, Annette Bening and Penelope Cruz, the same weekend in 2026 will now be held by an untitled movie directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu. Produced by Legendary Pictures it is currently that weekend’s only wide release major studio title, and thus has laid claims to IMAX screens. It follows the most powerful man in the world who embarks on a frantic mission to prove he is humanity’s savior before the disaster he’s unleashed destroys everything. It stars Tom Cruise, Sandra Hüller, John Goodman, Michael Stuhlbarg, Jesse Plemons, Sophie Wilde and Riz Ahmed. It is a weekend that has seen the highs of Joker in 2019 and the lows of its sequel Folie à Deux earlier this year.
DC Studios co-CEO James Gunn was asked on Threads to confirm The Hollywood Reporter’s coverage, and did. In explaining, he reminded his audience, having mentioned it several recent times that writer and director Matt Reeves has yet to submit a full script. Gunn assured that Reeves is “committed to making the best film he possibly can, and no one can accurately guess exactly how long a script will take to write”. Once there is a finished script, for any blockbuster there is around two years allotted for pre-production, shooting and post-production, and of course a sequel for The Batman falls right into that.
In easily better news for a Robert Pattinson-starring film, Bong Joon-ho’s Mickey 17 has regained some of its ground lost after moving off of January 31, 2025. After originally from there landing on April 18, 2025, it has just about halved the jump and moved to March 7 by switching places with the period vampire drama Sinners which reteams Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan after the Creed and Black Panther franchises. The pair have dual roles each, Coogler writing and directing and Jordan playing twins Elijah and Elias. After trying to leave their troubled lives behind, they return to their hometown to start again, but an even greater evil is waiting to welcome them back. Sinners’s six-week delay to April 18 is because the film was shot on film, and there aren’t enough laboratories available to do post-production work or keep it efficient enough to have kept the March date. Hailee Steinfeld, Jack O’Connell, Wunmi Mosaku, Jayme Lawson, Omar Miller and Delroy Lindo also star.
Mickey 17 also stars Steven Yeun, Naomi Ackie, Toni Collette and Mark Ruffalo. Seeking to get off of Earth, Mickey Barnes (Pattinson) signs up to be an "expendable": a disposable employee where after one iteration dies, a clone is made with memories intact. Said 17th version unintentionally survives a human expedition to colonize an ice world but having been assumed dead comes upon his next version already made.
Source: Deadline, James Gunn on Threads