The Batman Part II has slipped 868 days. Now filming has stopped

The Batman Part II is booked for 18 February 2028. That date falls 2,177 days after The Batman opened in American cinemas on 4 March 2022, and no Batman film has ever made its direct sequel wait that long. The record it takes belongs to Christopher Nolan: 1,463 days between The Dark Knight in July 2008 and The Dark Knight Rises in July 2012. Matt Reeves beats it by 49%.

Nolan's whole trilogy, from Batman Begins in June 2005 to Rises, ran 2,592 days. Three films in 19% more time than the single gap Reeves is about to set.

On Monday the production stopped. "Production on The Batman Part II has been temporarily paused while Matt Reeves focuses on a family matter," a DC Studios spokesperson said in a statement given to Deadline. "Matt has the full support of DC Studios and we look forward to continuing the journey soon." No return date was given. Warner Bros would not say whether the February 2028 release is affected. Rolling Stone and Comic Book Club carried the same statement, and The Hollywood Reporter reported it from a source.

Why Reeves has stepped away is his own business, and nobody at DC or Warner has added a word to the statement. The schedule, on the other hand, is a matter of public record, and it is the part the film's new owners will be reading this week.

Eight filming starts before one held

The sequel was announced in April 2022, weeks after the first film opened. What happened next is easier to follow as a list than a paragraph.

• February 2023. DC Studios gives the film its title and a release date of 3 October 2025. Filming is to begin that November at Warner Bros Studios Leavesden, in Hertfordshire.
• June 2023. The Writers Guild strike pushes filming to March 2024.
• March 2024. The release moves to 2 October 2026. Sound stages are booked out to the end of 2024, so filming slides to April 2025.
• December 2024. The release moves again, to 1 October 2027, to buy Reeves more writing time. Filming is now expected in the third quarter of 2025.
• February 2025. Filming is expected at the end of 2025, then in January or March 2026, after Robert Pattinson finishes The Odyssey and Dune: Part Three.
• 27 June 2025. Reeves hands in the finished script, written with Mattson Tomlin since late 2022, as Variety reported.
• December 2025. With Scarlett Johansson in final negotiations, the start date moves to the end of May 2026.
• June 2026. Principal photography begins, five months after the January target.
• 15 July 2026. The release moves to 18 February 2028 to allow more post-production time, per TheWrap. Reeves posts a camera test of Pattinson in the Batsuit the same day.
• 5 October 2026. Production pauses.

Three release dates abandoned. Measured against the original 3 October 2025 slot, the film has shed 868 days, which is most of the way to the 1,092 days Tim Burton needed to get from Batman in 1989 to Batman Returns in 1992. The delay on this film is almost a whole Burton sequel cycle long.

The shoot had been going well enough in public. Liverpool in the week of 20 July, three weeks in Glasgow city centre from 18 August, and then St Paul's Cathedral, which London Now reported was dressed as Gotham over the weekend of 3 October, with police cars and extras in dark clothing carrying placards outside the building. Pattinson was filmed walking through them. That was the last weekend before the statement.

What the first film actually earned

The Batman took $772.2m worldwide on a $200m production budget, according to Box Office Mojo: $369.3m in the United States and Canada, $402.9m everywhere else, from a $134m opening weekend. Two re-releases, in September 2024 and August 2025, have added $529,695 between them, which is why the total gets quoted as anything from $770m to $773m depending on who is counting.

That is a profitable film. It is not a film that buys a director unlimited patience, and the people whose patience it needed changed last week.

The film changed hands on Tuesday

The pause landed one day before the studio making it stopped existing in its old shape. Paramount completed its $110bn acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery on 6 October, and the combined business now trades on the New York Stock Exchange as Skydance under the ticker SKYD, according to the company's own filing. David Ellison is chairman and chief executive. Ynon Kreiz, who ran Mattel's film arm, is co-chief executive. The announcement commits to "at least $6 billion in run-rate synergies within three years", from technology, procurement, marketing and "real estate rationalization".

The two executives who signed off on this film's budget are already out. Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy left Warner's film division ahead of the merger, as we reported last week. James Gunn and Peter Safran remain at DC Studios and are credited as producers on Part II, alongside Reeves, Dylan Clark and Lynn Harris.

So the most expensive unfinished film on the Warner lot has a director on compassionate leave, a release date that has moved three times, and an owner who announced a $6bn savings target on its first day of ownership. None of that is anybody's fault. All of it points the same way: the February 2028 date is the first thing a new finance team looks at, and a paused shoot is the easiest justification for moving it that a studio ever gets.

The three previous date changes were announced in March, in the final week of December and in the middle of July. Never once while a camera was running.

Part II still holds an IMAX booking for 18 February 2028, 500 days from now. Skydance has owned it for one of them.