‘Black Adam’ Rocks Out With Solid $67 Million Weekend

Warner Bros. Discovery and DC Films’ Black Adam easily topped the weekend box office with $67 million. That’s Dwayne Johnson’s biggest non-Fast & Furious debut weekend ever, and thus his biggest in a star vehicle. In terms of DC Films-related launches, it is bigger than Shazam! ($57 million counting previews) and their biggest non-Batman (or Batman-adjacent like Joker) opening weekend since Aquaman ($72 million) in late 2018. Shazam! cost $90 million, while Black Adam cost $195 million. The $165 million budgeted Aquaman legged out to $334 million domestic amid the lucrative year-end blitz, becoming the leggiest live-action comic book superhero movie since Tim Burton’s Batman. Black Adam also got reviews closer to Justice League (39% and 5/10 on Rotten Tomatoes versus 40% and 5.1/10 for Black Adam) than Wonder Woman (93% and 7.7/10).

Like the Jurassic sequels and the Transformers films, the pans didn’t hurt because they still promised what audiences wanted (The Rock as a kid-friendly invincible killing machine amid IMAX-worthy spectacle and DC superhero tropes) out of this specific franchise entry. That Black Adam opened at the high end of Johnson’s star vehicles implies that the audience was a mix of DC fans, Rock fans and those who consider themselves parts of both respective fandoms. Since we’re not talking about a sky-high launch, it also implies that Johnson’s star power only means so much when dealing with a C-level character. For the first time since Nicolas Cage’s Ghost Rider in 2007 (and before that, Wesley Snipes’ Blade in 1998), a big Marvel/DC movie featured a movie star who was bigger than the marquee character.

It wasn’t about credit cookies or publicity chatter about Black Adam fighting Henry Cavill’s Superman in a theoretical spin-off. Let’s see if Johnson can survive a fight with Zachary Levi’s Shazam. It was the whole package, including being the first four-quadrant, kid-friendly franchise tentpole since Marvel’s Thor: Love and Thunder in early July. However, it won’t be uncontested for long. It might get kneecapped by Black Panther: Wakanda Forever in weekend four, as happened in April 2019 when Shazam! crumbled under the might of Avengers: Endgame. Shazam!’s $140 million domestic and $366 million worldwide (including $43 million in China) won’t cut it this time. While overseas business will likely be strong, we don’t yet know A) if Black Adam will play in China and B) how well it will perform if it does.

Rampage earned $155 million of its $430 million global total in China. Black Adam will make much more domestically than that video game adaptation’s $103 million North American cume, but its budget is closer to Jungle Cruise ($200 million) than Jumanji 3 ($120 million). Most of Johnson’s star vehicle hits (Journey 2: The Incredible Island, Hercules, Rampage, San Andreas, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, Jumanji: The Next Level, Fast Five, etc.) were budgeted at $90-$120 million. They didn’t *need* China to make a profit. Black Adam cost about as much as Kong: Skull Island which earned $168 million domestic from a $60 million debut and $567 million worldwide, including $168 million in China. Ditto Ready Player One earning $135 million domestically, $220 million in China and $581 million worldwide on a $175 million budget.

Say Black Adam legs out to around $175-$195 million domestic (multipliers on par with Hobbs & Shaw, Rampage) and earns global grosses on par with Jason Statham’s The Meg ($530 million including $144 million domestic and $153 million in China) outside of China and crosses $400 million global. That’s a circumstantial differential which changed since Covid. However, “only” earns $145-$155 million domestic, and then “only” makes overseas grosses sans China and Russia on par with Rampage and barely crosses $300 million, that’s a problem. The best-case scenario would be for Black Adam to either get a China release and party like it’s 2017 or to thrive (relatively speaking) alongside Black Panther 2 and earn enough overseas not to need China to bump up the global cume. The Jumanji sequels didn’t ($119 million out of $1.762 billion).

For now, the future looks relatively bright. The $67 million domestic debut is on the high end of realistic expectations. The 2.5x weekend multiplier shows that reviews didn’t hurt and that kids showed up yesterday and today for kid-friendly superhero violence. Its existence as the first kid-friendly tentpole in 3.5 months may help it leg out even alongside Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. In terms of four-quadrant tentpoles, it’s basically Black Adam, Black Panther 2, Avatar 2, DreamWorks Animation’s Puss in Boots 2 and Disney’s Strange World for the rest of the year. China is only a big unknown because Dwayne Johnson has been a butts-in-seats draw in that previously significant overseas territory and his films (alongside Statham and Vin Diesel) have occasionally been among the few where China made the difference between success and failure.

I don’t know what this means for DC Films since the goalposts keep changing as one new corporate owner after another changes the direction and frankly undercuts what was working. Walter Hamada was doing what we all wanted, making DC Comics movies of varying sizes, scales and sub-genres which weren’t overly predicated on Batman. Absent Covid and HBO Max (which kneecapped Wonder Woman 1984 and brought the SnyderVerse back to the discourse table), his run would be seen as relatively successful. I’m sure he’ll land somewhere safe and plentiful (Universal?). His successor will either do what he did and try to sell it as a bold, innovative approach or directly copy Marvel with predictably grim results. But for now, Black Adam is a solid hit for DC and WB.