‘The Batman’ (Starring Robert Pattinson) Pushed to 2022 as Warner Brothers Adjusts Release Calendar

The Batman, the gritty and dark-looking new adaptation of the DC Comics enterprise starring Robert Pattinson of Twilight fame (infamy?) has hit another road block on its planned release schedule.

Warner Bros. announced a re-shuffling of several upcoming releases on Monday night, and among them was The Batman being pushed from Oct. 2021 to March 2022. This news comes after production of the film was halted briefly due to Pattinson testing positive for the coronavirus in early September.

There’s more to the Warner Bros. rescheduling efforts, of course, largely the result of the COVID-19 pandemic continuing to affect our collective way of life — not to mention the extensive hardship it’s caused the entertainment industry and its various iterations. Also pushed back was the anticipated remake of the sci-fi classic Dune, which will now be released on Oct. 1, 2021, instead of its planned release on Dec. 18, 2020.

The recent trailer for Dune featured a dramatic Hans Zimmer arrangement of Pink Floyd‘s “Echoes”:

As for this latest version of the Caped Crusader’s story, its trailer was also noteworthy for its musical accompaniment — Nirvana‘s “Something in the Way,” the moody and haunting track from Nevermind:

Something in the Way” ramps up the moodiness of the teaser clip even more than it already would have on its own. By the looks of things, writer/director Matt Reeves has crafted another bleak entry to the Batman canon, with a bit more brutal violence depicted than you see in most Batman films.

The film stars Pattinson at Bruce Wayne/Batman, with co-stars Paul Dano (The Riddler), Jeffrey Wright (Commissioner Gordon), Zoë Kravitz (Catwoman) and Colin Farrell (The Penguin).

Some context on how The Batman falls within the Batman storytelling unvierse, per Variety:

In the panel for the film, Reeves said “The Batman” won’t be an origin story per se, but it does start in “Year Two” of Batman’s emergence, in which Batman and several other iconic characters — Catwoman, the Riddler, and the Penguin (Colin Farrell) — are still in the early stages of their development. In exploring the corruption at the heart of the story, Batman also begins to uncover a larger story of corruption within the city, and how it may connect back to the vastly wealthy and powerful Wayne family.