Box Office Bust: ‘Black Adam’ Faces Theatrical Losses
“Black Adam” has hardly been given a hero’s welcome in its box office run, generating just $387 million globally after seven weeks on the big screen.
That may seem like a lot of coinage, especially in COVID times when movies of all shapes and sizes are struggling to reach pre-pandemic grosses at the box office. But “Black Adam,” a comic book adventure starring Dwayne Johnson as a villain who once promised to change the “hierarchy of power” in the Warner Bros. DC universe, didn’t come cheap, costing $195 million to produce. And a big-budget movie led by Johnson — one of the biggest movie stars in the world, who plays against type here as a murderous anti-hero — requires a worldwide marketing spend of $100 million, according to knowledgable individuals. Insiders at Warner Bros. push back, saying that COVID-related box office limitations led the studio to scale back the global advertising campaign to $80 million.
