Dwayne Johnson is one of the biggest and most bankable movie stars on the planet, while the superhero genre is cinema’s most consistently lucrative form of big screen storytelling. Combine the two, and it would seem as though Black Adam is guaranteed to become a serious box office smash hit, right?
Well, that’s not entirely true, at least if the latest tracking data from BoxOfficePro turns out to be accurate. Don’t get us wrong, the long-awaited debut of the comic book antihero is going to be a million miles away from a flop, but the most recent projections paint the picture of a DCEU blockbuster that’s going to wind up as one of the entire franchise’s weakest performers.
As per the latest data, Black Adam is poised to open somewhere in the $55-70 million range during its opening weekend. That’s not bad, but it’s also only above Shazam!, Birds of Prey, The Suicide Squad, and Wonder Woman 1984 among the DCEU back catalogue, and the latter two were severely impacted by the effects of the pandemic.
In total, Black Adam is heading towards a total domestic haul between $135-175 million. Even if it lands at the very highest end of those estimates, it still falls way behind Justice League, Man of Steel, Suicide Squad, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Aquaman, and Wonder Woman, all of which hoovered up at least $229 million, with Gal Gadot’s first solo outing leading the pack with $412 million.
Those are only the tracking figures on home soil, though, and Johnson is immensely popular in China (where Marvel Studios can’t even get a look-in), so international audiences could propel Black Adam to hefty numbers, even if it’s somewhat lacking in the United States.