‘Black Adam’ passes ‘Birds of Prey’ at the global box office in less than 10 days

The hierarchy of power may not have changed so much as been slightly altered, but the reverberations of Dwayne Johnson’s Black Adam have already been felt much further afield than the rebranded DCEU, with Henry Cavill ditching Netflix’s The Witcher for reasons that surely have to do with his long-awaited return as Superman.

After spending 15 years in development, there was plenty of pressure on The Rock’s superhero debut to deliver, and Black Adam is delivering the goods after spending a second consecutive week at the top of the global box office. Critics may not have been enamored by its charms, but the discrepancy between a 40 percent critical score and 90 percent user rating on Rotten Tomatoes is par for the course when it comes to the star and producer’s output.

Not only that, but Jaume Collet-Serra’s blockbuster epic has also crossed $250 million globally, meaning that at some point yesterday it passed the $205 million accrued by Cathy Yan’s Birds of Prey throughout its entire theatrical run. Of course, the latter was R-rated, but it still played on the big screen for 11 weeks before the pandemic came along and ground the industry to a halt.

Birds of Prey is the fifth best-reviewed of the dozen DCU movies to date, but also the third lowest-grossing. The instant cult favorite remains a candy-colored mystery wrapped in an irreverent enigma, then, because it retains a huge amount of popularity among its fans in spite of being the franchise’s weakest non-COVID earner. Either way, Black Adam just ate it for lunch.