When it was released, though it did have a big opening weekend, it was clear “Black Adam” wasn’t going to be the hit Warner Bros. Discovery hoped it would be. Sure, in retrospect, the box office gross for the film eclipsed that of “Shazam! Fury of the Gods” and “The Flash,” but $393 million globally isn’t nearly enough to justify its oversized budget and marketing spend. When you add that to the fact that James Gunn and Peter Safran took over DC Studios and begun work on a reboot of the superhero universe, it’s obvious why we’re not talking about a “Black Adam” sequel. However, it’s still a bit of a sore spot for the film’s star, Dwayne Johnson.
Speaking with his buddy Kevin Hart on the “Hart to Heart” podcast, Dwayne Johnson explained, in his own words, why there is no sequel planned for “Black Adam.” But as you might expect, especially considering the news spinning he was trying to do on social media after the release of the film, Johnson isn’t ready to take any real responsibility for the film not getting a sequel. Instead, he wants to place all of the blame on the change at DC Studios and how the film got caught in a “vortex of new leadership.”
“As we were creating ‘Black Adam,’ developing it, shooting [it] — we got knocked down a little bit because of COVID and the shutdowns, got back up — there were so many changes in leadership,” Johnson said. “Any time you have a company, but especially that size and magnitude that’s a publicly traded company, and you have all those changes in leadership, you have people coming in who creatively, fiscally, are gonna make decisions that you may not agree with philosophically.”
He further put a point on his explanation by saying “Black Adam” was “one of those movies that got caught in that web of new leadership.”
In fact, Johnson seems to think that everyone else assumed “Black Adam” would get a sequel just based on the performance of the film. The actor-producer said that folks on “Wall Street” were wondering why no “Black Adam 2” was coming. So, as you can see, the spin is still in full effect from Johnson.
“That will always be one of the biggest mysteries, I think, not only for me and us on our end, but also throughout our business,” he said. “Because that’s a Kevin question, but that was a question out of Wall Street. That was a question out of Hollywood.”
Look, the truth is simple — you can’t spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a film, release it, watch it earn substantially less than it should and lose millions and millions of dollars, then expect people to fast-track a sequel. It’s easy to place blame on new leadership because that is the obvious scapegoat. If DC Studios is planning a reboot, then they won’t want “Black Adam 2” anyway, right? Well, yes. But also, if “Black Adam” made $1 billion and took over the cultural zeitgeist, which is basically the picture that Johnson continues to paint, then Gunn, Safran, and everyone at WBD wouldn’t be able to ignore it. Unfortunately, the film just wasn’t successful. Critically, financially, culturally—the film just didn’t land. Therefore, it’s difficult to imagine a world where “Black Adam 2” happens, with or without Gunn and Safran taking over.
You can watch Johnson’s full explanation below:
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