After seven weeks in cinemas, the Dwayne Johnson-led DC Comics adaptation “Black Adam” has pulled in $387 million globally.
Variety reports that with a costly $195 million production budget and a worldwide marketing spend of $80-100 million, the film that promised to change the ‘hierarchy of power’ in the DC universe may end up losing a bunch of money.
The trade indicates the film needed to earn around $600 million worldwide to break even, but box-office experts indicate the film will close out its theatrical run with less than $400 million globally.
As a result, it reportedly stands to lose $50-100 million on its theatrical release according to the estimates of insiders and rival executives.
Sources at Warners dispute the numbers, telling the trade the film will break even. They add that the change to a shorter theatrical window means the film’s jump to PVOD cuts costs on home video marketing (whilst increasing revenue from via premium pricing with estimates of a further $25-35 million gross there).
Even so, “Black Adam” isn’t a financial winner for Warners and joins a run of costly films this year that failed to generate a profit, including “Lightyear,” “Amsterdam,” “Moonfall” and the recent “Strange World”.
“Black Adam” debuted to $67 million, on par with other DC titles like “Aquaman” ($68M) and “Shazam” ($54M). However, those films rode waves of much stronger reviews and had long legs, with “Aquaman” turning into a $1.1 billion dollar hit whilst the cost-effective “Shazam” quadrupled its $90 million budget.
“Black Adam” will end up with just over half the gross of “The Batman” ($770M) earlier this year, but at least it is faring better than the $165 million grosses each of both “Wonder Woman 1984” and “The Suicide Squad” which saw their performances limited by the pandemic, simultaneous HBO Max debuts, and in WW1984’s case – poor reviews.
