'The World's Greatest Detective': Everything We Know About 'The Batman'

Since Christian Bale turned in his final performance as Batman in 2012's The Dark Knight Rises, fans have waited nearly a decade for another solo picture featuring the regal superhero.

While Ben Affleck assumed the role in 2016, playing Bruce Wayne in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and again a year later in Justice League, the only feature-length film to focus solely on Bruce Wayne in the last ten years was The LEGO Batman Movie, which was also released in 2017.

Fortunately for fans of the DC Comics superhero, the wait will not last much longer.

The Batman, directed by Dawn of the Planet of the Apes director Matt Reeves, is scheduled to hit theaters across the country on March 4, 2022.

Starring Robert Pattinson as Wayne (aka Batman), The Batman will feature a supporting cast which includes Zoë Kravitz as Catwoman, Paul Dano as the Riddler and Colin Ferrell as Oswald Cobblepot, better known to Batman fans as the Penguin, per IMDb.

Last October, following the release of the film's second trailer, Deadline reported that The Batman was created with a $100 million budget, and earlier this month, The Hollywood Reporter reported that the film is expected to run two hours and 55 minutes — the longest run time for any solo Batman movie, and the second longest for a theatrical superhero movie behind Marvel's Avengers: Endgame.

October's trailer provided fans with a window into what to expect from the upcoming superhero flick, and set the scene for Pattinson's highly-anticipated entrance into Gotham and the world of Batman. With cryptic messages from Riddler and intense combat scenes with Penguin, the trailer also showed the new, muscle car-styled Batmobile, which Newsweek reported was "different from any iteration we've seen in Batman films before."

In a recent interview with GQ, Pattinson explained why The Batman's original 2021 release date was pushed back, and discussed his experience stepping into the shoes of one of pop culture's most famous superheroes.

"I broke my wrist at the beginning of it all, doing a stunt, even before COVID," he told GQ. "I remember when that seemed like the worst thing that could go wrong."

Following the onset of COVID-19 in March, 2020, The Batman's shooting time was expanded to 18 months, and the film's release date was moved multiple times, before finally landing on Mar. 4.

Although Pattinson expressed that playing Batman was an "anchor" during delays, and that being responsible for a character of great magnitude kept his focus on the film, the former Twilight star said that COVID-related restrictions—as well as Batman's suit and signature cowl—created a "bubble within a bubble."

"The nature of the shoot was so kind of insular, always shooting at night, just really dark all the time, and I felt very much alone," Pattinson told GQ. "Even just being in the suit all the time. You're not really allowed out of the studio with the suit on, so I barely knew what was going on at all outside."

"I was really, really, really dead afterward," he added. "I just looked at a photo of myself from April and I looked green."

Still, Pattinson said that when he recently watched a rough cut of the film, even he was amazed to see Reeves' vision for a "70s noir detective story" come to life within The Batman.

"The first shot is so jarring from any other Batman movie that it's just kind of a totally different pace. It was what Matt was saying from the first meeting I had with him," he said. "I didn't even know that Batman was 'the world's greatest detective'; I hadn't heard that in my life before—but it really plays."

"Normally, when you see Batman he arrives and beats people up," Pattinson added. "But he's having conversations, and there are emotional scenes between them, which I don't think there have been in any of the other movies."