Well, DC movies fans, the wait is finally over. Dwayne Johnson refused to quit on playing Black Adam for more than a decade, and that determination paid off, as his DC Extended Universe debut is now playing in theaters. As is usually the case with high-profile releases, Black Adam kicked off its theatrical run on Thursday evening, and the opening night numbers for that launch are in.
Black Adam opened at the box office to the tune of $7.6 million in preview screenings across 3,500 locations, as shared by Deadline. This is now the highest preview haul for a Dwayne Johnson-led movie, narrowly surpassing Fast & Furious 6’s $7.5 million and easily overtaking Hobbs and Shaw’s $5.8 million, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle’s $4.7 million, San Andreas’ $3.1 million and Rampage’s $2.4 million. In other words, Black Adam is off to a decent start, although it didn’t come anywhere close to the two best opening nights for The Rock: Furious 7’s $15.8 million and The Fate of the Furious’ $10.4 million (though to be fair, those were ensemble pieces rather than placing Johnson front and center).
While it had been predicted that Black Adam would rake in around $70 million domestically during its opening weekend, that number has dwindled to an estimation somewhere upwards of $60 million. Fortunately, Dwayne Johnson remains a huge draw overseas, and the global estimates for Black Adam currently rest at around $135 million. Black Adam’s opening weekend competition includes the George Clooney and Julia Roberts-led romantic comedy Ticket to Paradise, Harry Styles’ My Policeman and The Banshees of Inisherin.
Black Adam has taken a solid step forward on the box office front, but it hasn’t been faring as well critically. The 11th DCEU movie currently ranks at 43% among professional critics on Rotten Tomatoes, though the Audience Score is a much kinder 88%. CinemaBlend’s own Eric Eisenberg rated Black Adam 2.5 out of 5 stars in his review, calling Dwayne Johnson’s entrance into the DCEU “more mediocre than bad.” Still, there have been plenty of times where mixed-to-negative reviews haven’t prevented a movie from performing strongly at the box office, so we’ll just have to wait and see how Black Adam does in these coming weeks.
After being imprisoned for nearly 5,000 years, Black Adam sees its title protagonist awakening in the present day and swiftly start spreading his lethal brand of justice in his home country of Kahndaq. This leads to the Justice Society of America, consisting of Aldis Hodge’s Hawkman, Noah Centineo’s Atom Smasher, Quintessa Swindell’s Cyclone and Pierce Brosnan’s Doctor Fate, intervening to stop Teth-Adam before more lives are lost. Black Adam’s cast also includes Sarah Shahi, Marwan Kenzari and Viola Davis reprising Amanda Waller. Behind the scenes, Jaume Collet-Serra directed the feature, and Adam Sztykiel, Rory Haines and Sohrab Noshirvani wrote the script.
CinemaBlend will continue sharing box office information and other Black Adam-related coverage in the weeks ahead, but those of you who’ve already seen the movie can read our Black Adam end-credits scene breakdown. If you’re looking to catch up on past DCEU projects, you can do so with an HBO Max subscription.
