An actual bat was released in a Texas theater while it was screening The Batman

In one version of Batman’s origin story, the young Bruce Wayne descends into the caves beneath his family’s manor to discover his greatest fear: A swarm of bats. This inspires him to become that which terrifies him, and he sets out on a path of unorthodox exposure therapy that involves dressing up like a giant flying rodent and driving around in a cool bat-shaped car.

With this precedent in mind, we now wait to see what future awaits all the would-be Bruce Waynes who attended a screening of The Batman last Friday only to find themselves in the company of a loose bat.

KXAN reports that an audience at the Moviehouse & Eatery in Austin, Texas were surprised by life imitating art in the form of a bat flying around their theater. When everyone figured out that the creature was not an immersive theater experiment but actually just a real loose bat, “management paused the movie and made multiple attempts to get the bat out.”

Because theater employees are not, generally speaking, trained rodent wranglers, the bat wasn’t caught until animal control was called in to remove it. (We assume they did so by releasing tiny penguins, scarecrows, and a chihuahua dressed like the Joker to drive it out of the building.)

Moviehouse & Eatery management offered refunds to make up for the winged distraction but apparently “a majority of the crowd” decided to stay and watch the movie anyway, likely because they knew that it’s not every day that you get to see an opening night screening of The Batman with a real bat as guest of honor.

The theater’s general manager has since said that she believes the bat was released as a prank and will be “adding additional security and checking all bags upon guest entry” to ensure nobody else tries to, like, sneak a pig into a showing of Pig or a disruptive cow into a return screening of First Cow.

[via Boing Boing]

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