We all know by now what a fiasco it was, The Rock's ultra-hyped superhero debut, Black Adam. Fans hated it. The critics loathed it and the film itself never even managed to recoup the cost of production (let alone the millions it cost to market). However, Dwayne Johnson refuses to take any of that blame, saying that it was only because DC/Warner was undergoing a change of management at the time. Here at Gamereactor we would say that it also had to do with the fact that the film was consistently bad.
The Rock on the Black Adam fiasco:
"I think that Black Adam got caught in a vortex of new leadership. And at that time, as we were creating Black Adam, developing it, shooting Black Adam, we got knocked down a little bit because of Covid and the shutdowns, got back up. There were so many changes in leadership. And as you know, 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 going to make decisions that you may not agree with philosophically. 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. And we created a diverse superhero portfolio, where we have just men and women of color in Black Adam. So I think Black Adam was one of those movies that got caught in that web of new leadership. But hey, at the end of the day, you know what it is? It's like new ownership coming in, buying an NFL team and going, "All right, not my head coach, not my quarterback. Doesn't matter how many times you won a Super Bowl, doesn't matter how many rings we got, I'm going with somebody else."
Thanks, Peacock.