There was a moment in time when Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson seemed unstoppable. After parlaying his extremely successful wrestling career into a role in the Mummy franchise, he suffered a brief setback with the Scorpion King spinoff movie — and then hit the ground running. Johnson showed up in the Fast and Furious franchise and cranked the entire series up a notch, raking in over $1 billion on both Furious 7 and The Fate of the Furious. He also helped relaunch Jumanji into a modern action-adventure franchise, with the first two movies earning $962M and $801M, respectively. Plus, a third Jumanji film is coming later this year.
These days, Johnson’s star isn’t shining quite as bright, however. After his attempt at serious acting in The Smashing Machine failed to impress, he pivoted back to blockbusters with a live-action Moana remake that flopped spectacularly. But there was a moment a few years earlier that perhaps marked the beginning of The Rock’s current downswing.
Before James Gunn took over DC Studios and stewarded its comic book adaptations in a different direction, Dwayne Johnson tried to establish himself as the franchise’s leading man. When his superhero movie hit theaters, it flopped, cementing the need for a DCU reboot. It also kicked off a string of poor box office performances for Johnson, which has included Red One, The Smashing Machine, and Moana’s live-action remake.
While this Johnson flick is considered a failure in retrospect, new data suggests it’s doing great now that it’s on Netflix. Although superhero movies aren’t surefire successes in theaters anymore, this data suggests there’s still demand for them.
The hierarchy of power in the DC Universe didn’t change
The movie I’ve been referencing is Black Adam, which came to Netflix on Aug. 1. Within just a couple of days, data from FlixPatrol shows that it has broken into Netflix’s top-ten most-watched movies. On my app, Black Adam is listed as the sixth-most-popular movie. That’s a strong performance for a nearly four-year-old superhero movie that didn’t do well at the box office.
The Hollywood Reporter claims that Black Adam grossed only $391 million on a $260 million budget. That just doesn’t cut it in today’s blockbuster market, so the DC film universe completely reset. At least that wasn’t the end of the movie’s legacy, as it’s still doing quite well on streaming.
There’s still demand for superhero movies
The superhero fatigue discussion comes up every time a movie like Black Adam or Supergirl flops, but data shows there’s still real interest in that kind of action movie. Black Adam is doing fantastic on streaming while Spider-Man: Brand New Day has already made over $1 billion at the box office.
Superhero movies might not be a safe enough bet to greenlight a $200+ million budget on a relatively unknown character like Black Adam anymore, but there’s an audience that will find these movies eventually.
As for whether we’ll ever see Dwayne Johnson’s Black Adam again after this flop, it’s unclear. Dwayne Johnson said in a 2022 X post that “DC and Seven Bucks have agreed to continue exploring the most valuable ways Black Adam can be utilized in future DC multiverse chapters,” but we have not heard a peep about the character in any DC Studios-related production since.