Regardless of whether you think Black Adam is the greatest DC Comics movie of all time or another disappointing DCEU outing, the box office numbers are undeniably fascinating to delve into.
On the one hand, everything looks good for Dwayne Johnson's comic book movie debut. Despite falling short of initial $70 million estimates (a regular occurrence in this post-pandemic landscape), Black Adam has thundered into North American theaters with a $60 million - $62 million opening weekend.
This is a career-best for The Rock outside of his cameo role in The Mummy Returns ($68 million), and exhibitors are understandably excited to have paying moviegoers back in their screens.
Here's where things get interesting, though.
Box office analyst Gitesh Pandya points out that, "Even if [Black Adam] rises to $65M for opening wknd, that will be 21% bigger than $53.5M opening of [Shazam!] in [April] 2019. Factor in 3 [years] of ticket price increases and [Black Adam] is likely to reach an audience size only about 10% bigger than Shazam's. With a production cost 100% bigger."
Marvel fanboy, DC fanboy, or somewhere in between, talking purely from a business standpoint, that's not great news. Johnson pushed for Black Adam to get his own movie after original plans called for him to appear in Shazam! and has used his massive social media presence to tout this movie as the start of a new era for the DCEU.
The actor even spoiled that huge mid-credits scene cameo in advance in an effort to build hype, and has been sharing videos of audiences breaking into cheers and applause.
Black Adam certainly isn't a flop and it stands a chance of making a decent profit once all is said and done. However, with Warner Bros. Discovery scrapping Batgirl because they didn't think it would make enough money, the new regime may have expected much more from this one and Johnson's anti-hero may no longer be at the forefront of future plans.
Stay tuned for updates.
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