The Batman took flight at the domestic box-office with $21.6 million in previews for Warner Bros. and DC. That includes Thursday night shows, and limited Tuesday and Wednesday Imax sneaks.

The $200 million event picture, starring Robert Pattinson as the Caped Crusader, is widely expected to go past $100 million by Sunday and score the second-best opening of the pandemic era behind Spider-Man: No Way Home.

The Matt Reeves-directed film centers on Bruce Wayne’s earlier days of fighting crime, and is a rogues’ gallery of Batman characters.

Paul Dano plays the Riddler, a serial killer pursued by Batman, while Zoë Kravitz plays Catwoman and Colin Farrell appears as the Penguin.

Theater owners are counting on The Batman to draw big crowds after a slow January and February.

The world’s largest exhibitor, AMC Entertainment, is even using the movie as a chance to experiment with variable pricing in the U.S. and charge anywhere from $1 to $1.50 more for a ticket to Batman.

Overseas, The Batman opened to a promising $5.3 million on Tuesday and Wednesday from its first handful of markets. The movie launched in an additional 47 markets on Thursday, although its release in Russia was scrubbed at the 11th hour because of the invasion of Ukraine.

The Batman in France on Wednesday opened to $1.4 million for an early total of $2.1 million including previews. That’s the best showing for a Warners title since the pandemic began; ditto in other markets where it launched midweek.

In the U.S., The Batman is the first release from Warners to receive an exclusive theatrical release since the end of 2020. All 2021 Warner films debuted simultaneously in theaters and on HBO Max.

The Batman has been well received by critics.

“With his Planet of the Apes installments, Matt Reeves showed that big studio franchise movies based on screen properties didn’t have to exclude intelligent and nuanced storytelling.

The Batman is, to be sure, a big scale genre picture, but it also bears the signature of its director and writers, who have made a grim, brooding, multi-nuanced film that also qualifies as a sampler of neo-noir detective story.

There are several reasons why The Batman will likely come in well behind the stunning $260 million domestic debut of Spider-Man: No Way Home

Reeves’ film runs nearly three hours, and is far darker than No Way Home, which featured several generations of actors who have played the webslinger.