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Last night, The Wall Street Journal published an article on the opening of the new Superman film, which kicks off the new DC Studios' official attempt to reboot the DC Universe as an interconnected film and TV series brand with hopes of it finally, actually competing (and/or succeeding) against Disney's Marvel Studios.
In the article, the fractured mess that had been DC under WBD was reviewed, noting that at one point David Zaslav was taking meetings with those who believed they could turn DC around, including, as we reported at the time was gunning to take over the brand, Dwayne Johnson.
The article noted, "Zaslav started meeting with people who had thoughts on how to fix DC, including actor and professional wrestler Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson. Those talks ended after the star’s DC movie “Black Adam” flopped."
While the film was the biggest opening of Johnson's film career when it was released and made $393,452,111 worldwide, Black Adam was not a critical success and did not result in Johnson gaining power over the brand. Johnson had pushed to create Black Adam as a centerpiece of the DC film universe with the tease of Adam, played by The Rock, building to a big showdown against Superman, at the time played by Henry Cavill.
Johnson later commented on what happened with the film during an interview with comedian and actor Kevin Hart, citing, "‘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."
James Gunn took over DC Studios and decreed they were mostly starting fresh (with very few holdovers from the previous DC film and TV series, including - notably, John Cena as Peacemaker who had been involved in several Gunn-written and directed DC projects), resulting in Dwayne Johnson's vision of Black Adam not being followed up on.
The WSJ story specifically ties the lack of success for Black Adam to Dwayne Johnson not gaining control over the DC brand and instead, setting WBD on course to instead hire Gunn, leading to this weekend's Superman film. Had Black Adam hit at the box offices, in toy stores and in merchandise, the entire trajectory of DC could have been completely different, built around The Rock as the box office draw.
The Rock, meanwhile, joined the Board of Directors for WWE parent company TKO, getting a massive financial windfall, as well as the rights to all his trademarks and copyrights in the professional wrestling circles. He will star this fall in The Smashing Machine and will also soon star in a Martin Scorcese film, so he's doing pretty OK for himself as well.
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