‘Black Adam’ Has Huge Opening Weekend at Box Office

DC Comics fans know Black Adam, but in the wider moviegoing world, he’s a very obscure character. So when people showed up this weekend for the movie in large numbers, it wasn’t necessarily the droves and droves of Black Adam fans that made the movie a hit. It was Dwayne Johnson fans, looking for the chance to see their favorite play a comic-book hero for the first time.

After its opening weekend, Black Adam has grossed an estimate $67 million. It’s not technically the biggest of any movie that Johnson has appeared in — several  Fast & Furious movies had bigger opening weekends — but in terms of films where Johnson was the main and primary star, it is the biggest box office debut of his entire career. (In fact, it even did better than Johnson‘s Fast & Furious spinoff, Hobbs & Shaw, which was a two-hander starring him and Jason Statham. That film grossed $60.0 million in U.S. theaters in its opening weekend back in 2019.)

In terms of recent DC movies, Black Adam is among the biggest opening weekends but not the champ. Earlier this year, The Batman debuted in theaters with $134 million in theaters. But, of course, that’s Batman we’re talking about; one of the best known and popular superheroes in history. Black Adam is a relatively minor character, mostly known (if known at all) as a Shazam villain or a member of the Justice Society of America. And Black Adam opened about equal with Aquaman, which had a $67.8 million opening weekend in 2018. And Aquaman is a far bigger name who had already appeared in Batman v Superman and Justice League by the time his movie came out. So this is a pretty solid number for Black Adam, all things considered.

The next DC movie coming to theaters is Shazam! Fury of the Gods, which is currently scheduled for release on March 17, 2023.