While The Batman will be the darkest take on the Dark Knight ever delivered on the big screen, nothing was filmed for the film that would have pushed its rating too far. The Batman is officially rated PG-13 due to "strong violent and frightening content, drug content, harsh language, and some suggestive material." When this was first revealed, some fans were disappointed since they assumed it would be the first theatrical Batman film to receive a R rating.
Director Matt Reeves was unsurprised by the rating. Reeves had planned for The Batman to be rated PG-13 from the outset, never leaving the door open for a R rating. In a recent interview with Den of Geek, the filmmaker revealed that he kept anything that may have been declared R-rated out of the picture from the start because he wanted as large an audience as possible to witness it.
Reeves never bothered filming scenes he knew he'd have to delete because he had the PG-13 rating in mind from the start. This means that a more extreme R-rated version will not be available on Blu-ray. Maintaining the PG-13 rating didn't necessitate any substantial adjustments, and even though a lot of footage was cut, nothing would have affected the rating.
The Batman will not be a short film. It has enough PG-13-rated material to give it a total length of 2 hours and 47 minutes, consuming nearly three hours of viewers' time. This makes The Batman one of the longest superhero films ever made, only topped by Avengers: Endgame's 181-minute runtime and Zack Snyder's Justice League's 242-minute runtime. The possibility of an extended or alternate cut of The Batman remains, but none will be R-rated.
The Batman is directed by Matt Reeves from a screenplay co-written with Peter Craig. In the starring part, Robert Pattinson is joined by Zoe Kravitz, Paul Dano, Jeffrey Wright, John Turturro, Peter Sarsgaard, Andy Serkis, and Colin Farrell. The film takes place around two years into Batman's new existence as Gotham City's savior, skipping the classic origin narrative but still following a young Bruce Wayne as a crime-fighter trying to find his way in a city full of violent psychopaths.
