DC's 'Black Adam' debuts opening weekend with $67 million in box office earnings

Yahoo Finance entertainment reporter Allie Canal details how DC's "Black Adam" movie fared in its opening weekend at the box office.

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DAVE BRIGGS: Roaring back in 2022, thanks to movies like "Top Gun, Maverick" and "Minions, The Rise of Gru." Well, last weekend, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's new action movie "Black Adam" also turned out to be a box office blowout.

- My son sacrificed his life to save me.

- Open fire!

[GUNFIRE]

- Now I kneel before no one.

DAVE BRIGGS: The Rock. All right, Yahoo Finance's Allie Canal here with us to talk about the weekend performance. Allie, I'm checking out Rotten Tomatoes. I don't know that I've ever seen a spread like this. The audience says 90%. The critics say 39%. How did it do?

ALEXANDRA CANAL: Ooh, I know. And you know what? That's an interesting spread as well because we've been seeing the critics be more harsh to some of these types of movies, where the audience score tends to be a little higher. But overall, though, pretty strong weekend if we take a look at the numbers. "Black Adam" delivered a very big opening weekend, 67 million in its domestic debut, and the first film since July to top 50 million.

This is great news for Warner Brothers, which has been really committed to reviving the DC franchise to better compete with Disney's Marvel franchise. And obviously, great news for the Rock as well. This film delivering his best domestic opening as a leading man, a long time coming from him. And according to the studio, premium format, so IMAX screens. They accounted for about 44% of overall domestic ticket sales. So another sign when it comes to strong box office appetite, as those types of tickets tend to be a bit more expensive.

Now, elsewhere at the box office, we had George Clooney and Julia Roberts, "Ticket to Paradise," that saw a domestic debut that topped 16 million bucks. Expectations were set in the low to mid-teens, so another beat on industry estimates there. Analysts that I've spoken with said that this romcom could have some potential staying power through the holidays, even through the end of this year, as these types of films tend to play the long game when it comes to ticket sales.

But obviously, a strong case can be made, especially when we think about those reviews. And depending on the genre, of course, when you have an A-list star, audiences are going to show up. Year to date, box office attendance levels are still down about 30%, compared to pre-pandemic times.

However, the amount of movies is also significantly down. So that's really important to think about. We just have a little more than 1/3 of what we saw in 2019. And that's been the biggest uphill battle for theaters. And that's not going to really improve until 2023. We only have three big releases that will take us through the end of the year.

We have "Black Panther, Wakanda Forever." That's out November 11. Disney's "Strange World" is out November 23, and then "Avatar, The Way of Water" on December 16. So those are the big three that are going to take us to 2023. But I don't think we're going to see that type of recovery that we want to until next year.

DAVE BRIGGS: Oh, probably not. I'm looking forward to that George Clooney, Julia Roberts. I'm a romcom fan, Allie. I have no problem admitting that. I'll see it. Allie Canal, good to see you. Thank you.