In an episode recorded prior to the strike, actor Dwyane Jonson popped up on Kevin Hart’s “Hart to Hart” talk show on Peacock where the topic of the “Black Adam” movie and its failure came up.
Johnson spent many years trying to bring the comic tentpole to life, succeeding last year with a movie that was being dubbed as something of a minor reboot of the DCEU – leading to Henry Cavill’s return as Superman for an end credits cameo.
Then the film tanked both with critics and commercially, Johnson’s strongest supporters at the studio exited, and DC Studios was overhauled with new leaders James Gunn and Peter Safran installed and a whole new slate of DC films announced.
Thus it came as little surprise when Johnson announced in December that a “Black Adam” sequel wasn’t moving forward. He explained to Hart:
“‘Black Adam’ got caught in a vortex of new leadership. It was so many changes in leadership. Anytime you have a company, a publicly traded company, and you have all those changes in leadership, you have people coming in who, creatively and fiscally, are going to make decisions that you may not agree with.”
Johnson adds he doesn’t understand why the sequel was dropped given the successes it did have:
“That will always be one of the biggest mysteries. You have the biggest opening of your career. Sure, no China, which could’ve been maybe 100 or 200 million more dollars. You have a superhero, and you want to grow out the franchise. You bring back Superman and Henry Cavill, which the world went crazy [for]. And we created a diverse superhero portfolio, where we have just men and women of color in ‘Black Adam.’”
The film did open to a robust $67 million at the box office but couldn’t sustain momentum and failed to cross the $400 million mark globally. Combined with a budget that was initially at $190 million but then expanded due to reshoots, the sequel’s scrapping came as little surprise to many.
Previously Johnson posted to social media in December that while a sequel is off the cards for now, they are looking at ways Black Adam “can be utilized in future DC multiverse chapters.”
Source: Variety
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