‘Black Adam': Inside the Decade-Long Journey to Bring Dwayne Johnson’s DC Anti-Hero to the Big Screen

Dwayne Johnson’s blockbuster continues to follow the trajectory of Marvel’s “Eternals” with an estimated total of $136 million after three weekends, a cume identical to Chloe Zhao’s November 2021 release. Without a Chinese release, which still hasn’t been announced by Warner Bros., “Black Adam” is likely to finish with a global total of around $400 million, roughly breaking even like Dwayne Johnson’s other DC release, “DC League of Super-Pets,” this past summer.

Refresh for latest…: Warner Bros/New Line DC’s Black Adam in its second offshore frame saw a strong hold, down just 45%. It added $39M from 76 offshore markets to take the running international box office total to $139M for a global cume through Sunday of $250M.

New Line/DC’s Black Adam ends its first week with $83.4M, which is slightly ahead of what Dwayne Johnson’s Fast & Furious spinoff Hobbs & Shaw did in its first week at $83.1M. That’s impressive considering that this is a deeper universe DC character, and the other was connected to a long-established franchise, not to mention it debuted in the summer. Hobbs & Shaw ended its domestic run at $173.9M. The pic’s second weekend was $36.5M, and currently Black Adam is expected to come in lighter at $27M-$30M in weekend two. The anti-hero’s Thursday gross was $3.1M, -8% from Wednesday.

Let’s celebrate the heydays of this autumn’s box office where we can, the season greatly hampered by a lack of tentpole product.

EXCLUSIVE: In the wake of Dwayne Johnson notching the highest opening of his solo star career with this weekend’s Black Adam at $67M, his holiday movie, currently titled Red One, is ramping up with additional castings: Deadline has learned that Nick Kroll, Kristofer Hivju, Wesley Kimmel and Mary Elizabeth Ellis are joining.

That figure tops the $60 million opening that lead star Dwayne Johnson posted with the “Fast & Furious” spinoff “Hobbs & Shaw” in August 2019 and is consistent with the $67 million opening that Jason Momoa’s “Aquaman” earned in December 2018. It is also closer to the $70 million projections that independent trackers initially posted before lowering them to $60 million closer to release.

Dwayne Johnson’s epic “Black Adam” thunders into theaters this weekend. A film about 15 years in the making— Johnson recently shared a story on social media sharing a press hit about him playing the character in 2007—Johnson has just never given up on the anti-hero character.

Even though “Black Adam” hasn’t even officially hit theaters yet, there’s already lots of buzz about the film’s end-credits scene. So, a spoiler alert if it’s not apparent to the reader what that scene entails: Henry Cavill returns as Superman to stare down Dwayne Johnson‘s Black Adam.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter “Black Adam,” a comic book adventure starring Dwayne Johnson, will loom large over the weekend box office. The film, from Warner Bros. and DC Comics, is expected to generate $60 million or more from 4,350 North American theaters between Friday and Sunday. That’ll easily be enough to dethrone “Halloween Ends,” which took the No. 1 spot last weekend with $41 million. “Black Adam” is squaring off against “Ticket to Paradise,” a romantic comedy featuring Julia Roberts and George Clooney, which is aiming to generate $15 million from 3,500 cinemas in its box office debut.

Finally, after a very long drought at the box office, a fire-breathing theatrical-windowed tentpole arrives in New Line’s Dwayne Johnson title, Black Adam.

Aldis Hodge is showing off his muscular arms at the premiere of his new movie, Black Adam, held at Cineworld Leicester Square on Tuesday night (October 18) in London, England.

Aquaman,” at least, had giant rideable seahorses and Nicole Kidman as a mermaid. “Black Adam” boasts Pierce Brosnan giving a worse performance than when he sang “Knowing Me, Knowing You” in “Mamma Mia!”Two decades after Johnson mind-numbingly barreled through the sand as “The Scorpion King,” he plays basically the same complicated warrior type only with less hair and zero personality. A prologue informs us that 5,000 years ago in fictional Kahndaq — could be Egypt, could be the Middle East — a young slave sacrificed himself to free his people and was therefore granted super powers by the ancient wizard from “Shazam!” He becomes Teth-Adam, Kahndaq’s champion.Back in the present day, the poor city is under military occupation by an evil company called Intergang (the bad guys have “no worries!” Australian accents) and is being plundered for its main natural resource, Eternium.

Jesus Christ, am I ever tired of superhero movies. Maybe you’re not, in which case, you should close the tab and move on; anything that follows doesn’t matter because superhero movies are critic-proof, hence their limitless boosting (in funding, in marketing, in overall dominance) by a risk-averse industry.

It’s been a long wait — nearly a decade, in fact — since Dwayne Johnson first signed on to become an integral part of the DC universe. He’s recently turned 50 (not that he looks it). But now, at last, he’s launched a big-league entry in the cinematic superpowers world with Black Adam.

Dwayne Johnson is in Canada promoting his new DC Comics movie!