The biggest talking point by far to come out of yesterday’s rebranding of HBO Max – just drop the “HBO,” it’s cleaner – was the overwhelming suggestion that nobody wants Harry Potter to rebooted as a TV series destined to last for a decade. However, the streaming service accidentally burned Dwayne Johnson to a crisp on day one.
It’s already entered superhero folklore that the hierarchy of power didn’t change in the aftermath of Black Adam as we’d constantly been told it would, after James Gunn and Peter Safran swept into the building and decided they didn’t care in the slightest about Johnson’s plans for sequels, spinoffs, crossovers, and a showdown with Henry Cavill’s Superman.
That makes it even more ironic that when the hierarchy of power did change for Warner Bros. Discovery’s platform yesterday, it was Black Adam that took pride of place at the top of the homepage, because reminding people that a $200 million blockbuster featuring the world’s highest-paid star flopped at the first hurdle is how to convince newcomers to instantly sign up and subscribe.
The fallout from Black Adam stretched much further than disappointing critical reactions and tepid box office takings, too, with Zachary Levi repeatedly hinting that The Rock had undermined the Shazam! franchise at several turns by both refusing to cameo in Fury of the Gods and then shutting down the notion of Billy Batson’s superpowered alter ego returning the favor.
You couldn’t make it up that one of Warner Bros.’ biggest recent failures is right there hyping up the dawn of a new era, but maybe Johnson’s familiar face is the selling point, and not the film itself.