A recent box office update claimed that Black Adam would lose money for Warner Bros./New Line, but this was soon countered by a Deadline article which suggested that the movie would likely break even, and may even turn a profit.
Star Dwayne Johnson re-tweeted the piece, adding that he wanted to wait until he'd confirmed "with financiers before I shared this excellent news" that Black Adam would earn at least $52M-$72M for the studio.
There was a lot of scepticism, with some speculating that the actor might be attempting a bit of spin, and Puck's Matt Belloni has now outright accused Johnson's team of feeding misleading figures to the trade.
According to "several Warners executives," Deadline's report - which Belloni calls "one of the sillier trade stories of all time" - was "filled with false assumptions" in an effort to position Black Adam as a much bigger hit that it really was. He does note that "nearly all movies of this size will ultimately pencil out," but that doesn't mean "it's considered a worthwhile movie."
Belloni concludes with: "this kind of stuff doesn’t happen at Marvel."
A bit of a low blow, but he's not wrong. It's almost impossible to imagine any Marvel Studios filmmaker taking matters into their own hands in this way, and it's become clear that recently appointed DC Studios co-heads James Gunn and Peter Safran have a lot of work to do to get their house in order.
It'll be interesting to see if Johnson or anyone else associated with Black Adam issues a response.