After nearly 15 years in development, Dwayne Johnson is finally getting to see his work pay off in a big way.
As the opening weekend of Black Adam draws to a close, the box office estimates have rolled in. Domestically the film took in $67 million, marking the biggest opening of Johnson’s career for a film where he’s the lead. This came in below some of the estimates that had it in the $70 million range, but is in line with others. In general, this film had one of the widest ranges of possible openings we’ve seen in some time, and $67 million is good.
For comparison, Shazam! opened with $53.5 million, while Aquaman opened with $67.87 million. The former went on to a domestic total of $140.37 million, while the latter took in $335.06 million.
In the foreign markets, Black Adam took in $73 million, the UK being the top market at $6.1 million. This brings the global opening weekend total to $140 million.
Using the same comps as before, Shazam! took in $223.19 million from the foreign markets over the course of its run for a total of $363.56 million. Aquaman did very well in the foreign markets and took in $808.69 million for a global total of $1.143 billion.
If we want to compare Johnson to his last pre-pandemic leading film, we’ll jump back to Jumanji: The Next Level which took in $316.83 million domestic, $481.37 million foreign for a global total of $798.21 million.
Something that is very much going to work in the film’s favor is it has a very long runway before real competition arrives. The first film serving a similar demographic to show up will be Black Panther: Wakanda Forever on Nov. 11. Black Adam has two more good weekends of being the only comic book film in the marketplace, so it should do well over that period.
Black Adam is now in wide theatrical release.
