Black Adam Scores $26.8 Million Opening Day On Its Way To $67 Million Weekend [Update]
Update: "Black Adam" outperformed earlier projections thanks to strong Saturday and Sunday ticket sales, and rounded out its opening weekend with $67 million at the domestic box office. Original article follows.
Does anyone else feel something? What is that? Oh, I think it's a change in the hierarchy of the DC universe. Warner Bros' "Black Adam" has finally hit theaters, and while it's not exactly breaking records for DC superhero movies, it is on track to have a lucrative first weekend box office. According to Variety, the movie has already earned $26.8 million via Thursday previews and opening day numbers, making it a hit-in-the-making.
"Black Adam" is projected to top out at about $62.2 million this weekend, which would put its opening weekend about on par with 2018's "Aquaman" ($67.8 million), but still much less successful than DC's biggest openers, like "Wonder Woman" ($103 million) and "The Batman" ($134 million). Still, the steady opening weekend marks a bit of a revival for the domestic box office, as Variety reports that no wide release has made over $50 million in its first weekend since July's "Thor: Love and Thunder."
There will also be global numbers to consider: DC films typically rake in the dough overseas ("Aquaman," for example, ended up making over a billion dollars globally, with 70% of that from international markets), and "Black Adam" could hit big outside of North America. As of yesterday, the superhero flick had made $14 million internationally, per Collider. All of these numbers match up against the film's reported $195 million production budget. With no other major competition hitting theaters until "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" in three weeks, "Black Adam" should have plenty of time to recoup its costs and make an impression on moviegoers.
The hierarchy of the October box office has shifted
Whether that impression will be a favorable one or not remains to be seen: the film hasn't gotten the most glowing feedback from critics by any means. It currently sits at a 41% on Rotten Tomatoes, meaning fewer than half of critics included in that site's aggregation liked it more than they didn't. The overall reaction to the story of reawakened antihero Teth-Adam (Dwayne Johnson) and the Justice Society of America has been fairly lukewarm for a superhero film. In his review, /Film's Witney Seibold called it a movie in which filmmakers "fail to effectively establish mood or stakes," and says that "any mythic qualities the character has are drowned out by buckets of sloppy mayhem."
"Black Adam" may not be the biggest smash hit in the DCEU, or the most acclaimed, but it's certainly doing enough to keep the autumn box office in business. The second-highest-grossing film of the weekend is set to be the Julia Roberts and George Clooney-led rom-com "Ticket To Paradise," which Variety reports is projected to bring in $16 million. When he's not beating up anyone who stands in his way, Black Adam is easily beating the box office competition.