Warner Bros has delayed the release of The Batman until 2022, as coronavirus continues to affect the film industry.

Robert Pattinson’s debut turn as The Caped Crusader was set to arrive in October next year, but it will now be released on March 4, 2022.

Other superhero films on the move include The Flash, now arriving on November 4th 2022, and Shazam! 2 – which is set for release on June 2nd, 2023. Dwayne Johnson’s Black Adam, which was previously scheduled for release in December 2021, is now undated.

However, the removal of Black Adam means that The Matrix 4 will now premiere on December 22nd, 2021 — some four months earlier than previously announced.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the shifts are not the direct result of cinemas being closed, but rather the backlog of production delays caused by the pandemic. Cameras rolled once more on The Batman last month, only for it to be halted when Robert Pattinson contracted Covid-19.

Yesterday, Cineworld confirmed that it is “temporarily” closing all of its cinemas in the UK and US.

Speculation about the immediate future of the cinema chain had been rife over the weekend, with the company tweeting  that “a final decision has not yet been reached” on whether to continue operating.

The decision comes after the latest blow for the cinema industry was delivered last week by the news that the forthcoming James Bond film, No Time To Die, had had its release date delayed again as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

The ninth instalment of the Fast and Furious franchise has also been pushed back to May 28, 2021 as a result of the pandemic.