One of the biggest stories to get drowned out by the noise from James Gunn’s alleged plans for the future of the DCU was the profitability of Black Adam, with Dwayne Johnson himself stepping in to try and set the record straight.
With a budget estimated to be $200 million, plus the additional marketing and distribution costs minus the cut that theaters take for screening the film, failing to crack $400 million at the global box office led to much speculation that the long-gestating superhero blockbuster had spent 15 years in development hell for the sole purpose of bombing spectacularly.
Reports hinted that Black Adam could stand to lose up to $100 million from theaters, but Johnson took to Twitter to claim that his financial wizards had estimated that the movie would in fact turn a profit, if not a very large one. Naturally, digging deeper into the figures led many to question the methodology behind the findings, but The Rock better hope his figures are accurate – because an HBO Max streaming date has been revealed.
Subscribers will be able to catch Black Adam on Warner Bros. Discovery’s platform exactly one week from today on December 16, where everyone involved will be hoping it proves popular enough to assuage those many sequel doubts. Johnson has remained suspiciously quiet on anything and everything to do with James Gunn since he became co-CEO, so we’ll be very interested to find out what comes of the inevitable meeting between the two over what comes next.