History shows that both big Avatar 2 and Black Adam can thrive over the same Christmas season. And if DC Films' Dwayne Johnson flick dings James Cameron's mega-budget Disney/Fox sequel enough to draw blood, well...
In news I missed because I was writing my
Frozen 2 review, Dwayne Johnson
has announced that
Black Adam is both absolutely happening (after years of teases and false starts) and that it will open on December 22, 2021. Yes, that’s five days after Fox and Disney finally unleash James Cameron’s
Avatar 2.
Warner Bros. and DC Films had grand luck with
Aquaman last Christmas, earning $335 million domestic from a $72 million opening weekend and $1.048 billion worldwide in the process. The
Aquaman sequel is dated for December 16, 2022, the same day where Disney still (as of this moment) has a
Star Wars movie slotted, but that could change with the
Game of Thrones dudes no longer developing their aborted trilogy.
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Point being, if
Avatar 2 is going to be the, uh,
Avatar of the 2021 Christmas season, then
Black Adam is pitching itself as
Sherlock Holmes.
Sherlock Holmes also opened right after
Avatar ten years ago. While
Avatar dominated the holiday season on its way to a record-smushing $760 million domestic/$2.789 billion global total, WB’s $90 million-budgeted Guy Ritchie-directed action drama earned $62 million over Christmas weekend on the way to a $209 million domestic/$524 million global cume.
Tomorrow Never Dies opened concurrently in December of 1997, and both films earned $25-$30 million opening weekends.
Titanic did the
Titanic thing and sailed to $600 million domestic and $1.8 billion worldwide, while the second Pierce Brosnan 007 flick legged it to $125 million domestic (above the $106 million cume of
GoldenEye with a 5x multiplier, easily a record in the post-Dalton era) and $333 million worldwide (just under the $350 million cume of
GoldenEye).
Mamma Mia! earned $144 million domestic and $609 million worldwide opening concurrently with
The Dark Knight in July of 2008.
PROMOTED
The Robert Downey Jr./Jude Law flick and the James Bond actioner both earned best-case-scenario box office despite James Cameron becoming “King of the World” twice in a row. So did the Meryl Streep/Amanda Seyfried/Pierce Brosnan musical, which earned only $5 million less overseas that year than
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and the Chris Nolan Batman sequel. It earned more than
Iron Man ($585 million) worldwide. If
Black Adam is any good, then there will be room for both movies to proverbially live their best lives.
For what it’s worth, the Jaume Collet-Serra-directed flick, which like
Shazam! will be a New Line release (and thus potentially have a budget closer to
Venom than
Spider-Man: Homecoming) will be (at least) the third DC Films flick set for 2021, alongside
The Batman on June 25 and
The Suicide Squad on August 3. Those three films will go up against Marvel’s
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings in February,
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness in May, Sony’s third MCU
Spider-Man movie in July and
Thor: Love and Thunder in November.
With
Aquaman,
Wonder Woman and
Shazam! earning strong reviews and decent box office, and with
Joker set to pass $1 billion as early as tomorrow, concurrently with the unknown fate of Marvel’s post-
Avengers: Endgame slate, the unofficial battle between the MCU and DC Films is at a point where it’s essentially a fair fight. Yes, I’m assuming the next batch of Marvel movies will do just fine, and there may never be another DC Films flick that rivals
Wonder Woman’s domestic and
Aquaman’s global box office, but it’s no longer such a one-sided fight.
As far as
Avatar 2 versus
Black Adam, history shows that both movies will probably “win.” But if
Black Adam happens to rough up
Avatar 2 enough to make a difference, since the James Cameron sequel will be a lot more important to Disney/Fox than will the Dwayne Johnson superhero movie for Warner Bros., well, that’s a way for
Black Adam to “win” no matter how far ahead
Avatar 2 ends up. And after years of every other studio quivering in fear of when Disney might slate their next biggie, the competition has no choice but to take the fight to them. Game on...