Making the theater experience as immersive as possible is rarely a bad thing. Unless, of course, you bring live bats into the equation, which is exactly what happened during a showing of The Batman in Texas on Friday. While Robert Pattinson and Zoë Kravitz brought some long overdue sexiness to superhero films, a winged creature had other plans as it flew around the ceiling of an Austin theater, eventually prompting management to pause the film and offer refunds as it struggled to get the little guy out.
However, while those efforts were initially unsuccessful, some theatergoers were actually on board with the live bat action and stuck around to finish the film. Via KXAN:
“Local animal control was immediately contacted, and they have been overseeing the situation to ensure guest, associate and animal safety,” Heidi Deno, the general manager for Moviehouse & Eatery told KXAN.
The theater offered to give refunds, but a majority of the crowd opted to stay and watch the film, “bat and all,” according to the KXAN viewer who took the video.
As for how the bat got in, the theater believes it was a prank and will be stepping up its security and bag checks to make sure nobody else smuggles in a live bat and tries to make it watch Batman, which is admittedly, kind of funny. That said, nobody get the same idea for Spider-Man because spiders are the devil. Don’t even think about it.
You can see video of the live bat in action below. (WARNING: There’s an f-bomb dropped at the beginning.)
I’m at the Batman movie and there are real bats in the theater…. #Imcooloffthat pic.twitter.com/NdSkMITXQi
— J (@Jeremiah24_) March 5, 2022
(Via KXAN)