The Batman sequel with Robert Pattinson delayed by a full year

The film will now arrive in cinemas in October 2026

The Batman Part II has been delayed by a full year by studio Warner Bros, and will now be released on 2 October 2026.

The sequel to Matt Reeves’s acclaimed DC superhero noir The Batman will see Robert Pattinson reprise his role as the titular superhero, along with fellow returning cast members Zoë Kravitz (Catwoman), Paul Dano as (The Riddler) and Andy Serkis (Alfred).

The film is also expected to see an expanded role for Saltburn star Barry Keoghan, who was set up as a mysterious Arkham Asylum inmate who befriends The Riddler at the end of the first film and is expected to become some version of The Joker.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, DC insiders have said the delay is related to last year’s Hollywood strikes.

Now that The Batman Part II has vacated its previous release date, Warner Bros will instead release Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride!, starring former Batman star Christian Bale, on 3 October 2025.

Other films being rearranged on the studio’s upcoming slate include Barry Levinson’s gangster film Alto Nights, which stars Robert De Niro, Debra Messing and Cosmo Jarvis. It has been delayed from November this year to a new release date of 21 March 2025.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s as-yet-untitled new film, which has a star-studded cast including Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor, Wood Harris, Alana Haim and Chase Infiniti, is now set to be released on 8 August 2025.

Robert Pattinson in ‘The Batman’ (Warner Bros Pictures)

In a four-star review of The Batman, The Independent’s chief film critic Clarisse Loughrey wrote: “The Batman is a very good Batman film. To think of it as anything more only leads to delusion or disappointment. It also undermines the more subtle work at play in Reeves’s film, which remains faithful to the character’s core iconography – bat ears, elaborate gadgets, encroaching darkness – while simultaneously interrogating its usefulness.

“Comparatively, it’s pitched somewhere between Christopher Nolan and Tim Burton – with one foot in our reality, and the other planted in a Gothic noir aesthetic derived partially from Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One comics.

“Perhaps that’s where you’d place our new Batman, Pattinson, too – though his performance hasn’t been this tapered down since his Twilight days, stripped of the exhilarating chaos that infects his acting in Good Time or The Lighthouse. I can’t blame him. Anything outside the register of growly and monotone would be considered mutiny by fans, so it’s to be expected that he sounds almost exactly like Christian Bale did in Nolan’s widely admired Dark Knight trilogy of the early Noughties.”