DC Fans Credit James Gunn’s ‘Superman’ Success to Dwayne Johnson Being ‘So Bad’ in ‘Black Adam’: ‘Thank You’
DC fans have hilariously thanked former “Black Adam” actor Dwayne Johnson for James Gunn’s “Superman” success, which opened nationally in theaters Friday and raked in the year’s best box office preview total with $22.5 million.
As TheWrap previously reported, in 2022 Johnson and Seven Bucks co-founder Dany Garcia met with Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav on not only inserting Superman back into “Black Adam,” but according to four insiders with knowledge of the meeting, positioning Seven Bucks to run DC and replace then-chief Walter Hamada.
Garcia wasn’t hired to run the unit, and Johnson and Seven Bucks were evicted from DC shortly after “Black Adam” tanked and Zaslav hired James Gunn and Peter Safran to run the division.
Now that “Superman” appears to be having liftoff at the box office — and boasts a positive 82% fresh rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes — DC diehards had a field day on social media trolling Johnson and thanking him for pivoting the Warner Bros. plan away from Black Adam and Henry Cavill’s Man of Steel return and into the arms of Gunn and “Superman” star David Corenswet.
“Just saw Superman … First and foremost, I want to say: Thank you Dwayne Johnson,” one fan wrote on X in a viral post, seen at the time of publishing 3.4 million times.
“Dwayne Johnson is the best thing to happen to DC,” another wrote. “He was so bad we finally got the Superman movie we deserved.”
“When you think about it, we should all thank Dwayne Johnson. Because if it weren’t for him, we’d be stuck with his DCEU and wouldn’t have James Gunn, the DCU and David Corenswet as #Superman,” wrote another. “So thank you Rock. The hierarchy of the DC Universe definitely changed … for the better.”
“Superman was fire,” another fan gushed. “I feel like I owe Dwayne Johnson a thank you letter for f–king over the DC Universe. We wouldn’t have gotten this peak Superman movie.”
“I thank Dwayne Johnson for putting the final nail in the coffin of trainwreck DCEU with the Black Adam movie he’s been wanting for years and for paving the way for us to see this masterpiece,” another wrote of “Superman.”
Warner Bros./DC Studios’ “Superman” is off and flying at the box office with $22.5 million from preview screenings, the most for any film this year.
“Superman” has enjoyed heavy anticipation from fans of the Man of Steel since it was first announced more than two years ago, and Warner Bros. has looked to capitalize on the hype with special early fan screenings available exclusively to Amazon Prime subscribers.
Here are more reactions to “Superman” and Johnson’s franchise that could’ve been:
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