Black Adam just passed $250 million at the global box office, but how does the performance compare to the rest of the DCEU? Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson bragged to moths that Black Adam would “change the hierarchy of power in the DC universe”, so how does it change the hierarchy of box office performance in the DCEU?
The DC Extended Universe has seen mostly solid results at the box office, but it hasn’t achieved the consistent blockbuster output of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. So while many of the movies in the DCEU could be considered underachievers, they’re still mediocre successes, barring a few legitimate flops. Now that it’s two weekends away, how do you do that? Black Adamcompare the domestic and international box office (and the drop in the second weekend) with other DCEU films?
Black Adam’s Box Office Is Similar To Other Post-Snyderverse DCEU Movies
The DCEU’s tumultuous history has led to some major changes in DC Films leadership and strategy at Warner Bros. departure. For example, every single “Snyderverse” movie opened domestically for more than $100 million, and every post-Snyderverse movie (including Justice League 2017) opened under $100 million. This also applies to Black Adamalthough Black AdamThe box office performance so far is a big improvement over other recent DCEU films.
Black AdamIts $67 million domestic opening weekend box office is the largest since the DCEU Aquariuswhich opened only slightly higher than Black Adam at $67.9 million and became the DCEU’s highest-grossing film with a worldwide total of over $1.1 billion. The worldwide box-haul of the Snyderverse Man of Steel ($668 million), Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice ($873 million), suicide squad ($746 million), and Wonder Woman ($821 million) comes in at $777 million compared to the post-Snyderverse average of $422 million. While Black Adam is just 2 weekends into its box office run, its $250 million puts it a striking distance from the post-Snyderverse average, but well beyond the reach of the kind of box office success seen by the Snyderverse films.
In the meantime, Black Adam’s Its $250 million worldwide gross is already ahead of most other post-Snyderverse films, including: Birds of Prey (and the fantastic emancipation of one Harley Quinn)) ($117 million), Wonder Woman 1984 ($201 million), and The Suicide Squad ($168 million). Black Adam also has a fighting chance to hit Shazam!totaling $365 million, but with Black Panther: Wakanda Forever releasing soon, it’s doubtful it will have the legs it takes to reach Aquarius‘s $1 billion catch, despite a similar opening weekend, especially after Black Adamsecond weekend drop off.
Black Adam’s Second Weekend Box Office Drop Doesn’t Beat DCEU Average
The biggest criticism of the box office performance of the early DCEU films was the drop-off at their box office on the second weekend. Man of Steel fell 64.6 percent, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice fell 69.1 percent, suicide squad fell 67.4 percent, and Wonder Woman fell 43.3 percent (which is actually the DCEU’s second-best), averaging 61.1 percent. Black Adam this improves with a decrease of 58.7 percent.
The post-Snyderverse DCEU movies haven’t always reached the same box office heights (with only Aquarius passing one of the Snyderverse episodes at the box office), but they’ve seen improved declines in the second weekend, averaging 54.2 percent. Aquarius has the best second weekend drop of the entire DCEU at 23.2 percent and Shazam!is 54.3 percent and Birds of preyis 48 percent beat both Black Adam; however, Black Adam improves on both Wonder Woman 1984is 68 percent and The Suicide Squad‘s 72 percent, although since both were released while many theaters were closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it probably isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison.
Black Adam may not be the sort of box office behemoth to change the DC Universe’s power hierarchy, but it has a good chance of becoming the DCEU’s highest-grossing film since Aquarius, which isn’t a bad job considering Black Adam is a more obscure DC character to a general audience. The DCEU still needs a big hit to return to the kind of blockbuster it saw at the start, but given the Black AdamThe post-credit scene is what brought Henry Cavill back as Superman, and there’s a potential now Man of Steel 2 working, Black Adam could very well be responsible for restoring the DCEU’s power hierarchy, even if the box office isn’t its biggest standout success.
