Dwayne Johnson Responds To Claims Black Adam Will Lose Money

Taylor Swift · December 9, 2022

The Rock is firing back.

In October, Dwayne Johnson’s long-awaited arrival as Black Adam hit theaters, with the DC Comics anti-hero facing off against the Justice Society after being awoken from a 5,000-year slumber. Black Adam was met with mixed critical reception, and on the box office front, as of this writing, it’s made over $384 million worldwide. Earlier this week, it was reported that Black Adam will end up being a big money-loser for Warner Bros. Pictures, but now Johnson has responded back to these claims, alleging his DC movie will actually make a profit.

The earlier number-crunching claimed that Black Adam will need to make at least $600 million to simply break even, but with the movie not even hitting $400 million, it will allegedly lose between $50-100 million during its theatrical run. However, on his Twitter page, Dwayne Johnson said that after waiting to “confirm with financiers,” he’s been told that Black Adam will profit between $52-72 million. He also compared Black Adam’s world box office haul to Captain America: The First Avenger, with that 2011 MCU movie pulling upwards of $370 across the globe.

Dwayne Johnson then shared a link to a Deadline article breaking down this positive spin on Black Adam’s box office performance, which claims that the movie had a $195 million budget and a P&A spend of $80-100 million, and that this $52-72 million profit doesn’t include Black Adam merchandise sales. Now granted, Black Adam certainly fell short of being one of Dwayne Johnson’s highest-grossing flicks, but when comparing it to something like 2019’s Hobbs & Shaw, the article notes that the DC movie didn’t have the benefit of opening in Russia and China like the Fast & Furious spinoff did. This is offset, though, by Black Adam supposedly having a “thriftier marketing budget” than what Hobbs & Shaw got, as well as how there’s shorter theatrical windows these days, “which enables the studio to stretch their marketing dollars.” Black Adam is currently available to buy or ent digitally, and it will reportedly be available for HBO Max subscribers to stream starting December 16.

Something worth mentioning regarding Dwayne Johnson’s comparing Black Adam to Captain America: The First Avenger is that if the former movie did indeed have a production budget of $195 million, that’s $55 million more than what the latter got. As such, it’s easier to consider The First Avenger a financial success at the $370 million mark, whereas with Black Adam, there are the conflicting accounts of whether or the movie will actually be profitable. From Dwayne Johnson’s perspective, he sees his Black Adam debut as a success and the first step to turning this character into a major DCEU player.

Unfortunately for The Rock, his future as Black Adam might not be as bright as he thinks it is. Accompanying yesterday’s shocking news that Wonder Woman 3 has reportedly been cancelled, it was mentioned that a Black Adam sequel is “unlikely” because it failed to make a bigger splash in theaters. Also, Dwayne Johnson “playing up” his role in bringing back Henry Cavill as Superman and his position at DC allegedly might negatively affect his relationship with the new management, which includes DC Studios heads James Gunn and Peter Safran. Gunn kept quiet in response to these reported shakeups regarding specifics of how he and Safran are changing up the DC media landscape, so we’ll just have to wait and see how Johnson’s Black Adam fits into the picture going forward, if at all.

For now, feel free to read CinemaBlend’s review and read through our detailed lineup of upcoming DC movies. You can also head to HBO Max to watch the already-released DC movies in order.