While he was playfully telling DC's superheroes to watch their backs as a marketing ploy,
it seems Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson was really attempting a DC takeover behind
the scenes. Here's how that ploy hit rock bottom.
Remember when Johnson said this?
"The hierarchy of power in the DC Universe is about to change."
He used this line multiple times in the leadup to the release of "Black Adam," his DC Films
debut as an ancient, superpowered antihero. Since then, those words have become meme fodder because
they were right, but not in the way he expected. The film failed to live up to expectations both
critically and financially, and Johnson's plans for a future with Warner Bros. Discovery crumbled.
In the fall of 2022, Johnson seemed to be positioning himself not only
as DC's latest star, but also as one of its prime architects. He muscled a
cameo from Henry Cavill as Superman into "Black Adam." He flooded his
social media with videos of himself in "Black Adam" boardroom meetings.
It seems he was really making a clumsy Machiavellian play to become a DC Films
bigwig. According to a bombshell report from Variety, Johnson and his associates,
including producers Hiram Garcia, the A-lister's former brother-in-law,
and Beau Flynn aimed to put themselves at the center of future plans for DC Films. Johnson
directly pitched new Warner Bros Discovery CEO David Zaslav on a "Black Adam" franchise,
which the star envisioned as a series of movies leading to a showdown between Adam and Superman.
The move reportedly came as former DC studio head Walter Hamada and WB exec Toby Emmerich were on
their way out on the heels of post-merger restructuring. The timing did little to
ingratiate Johnson to others in the company. Variety quotes one unnamed source as saying,
Incoming film chiefs Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy rubber-stamped Johnson's
request for Cavill's Superman cameo in "Black Adam," but that created a whole other issue,
because Emmerich had decided Cavill's run as Supes was over in 2018.
Johnson's gambit might have succeeded had "Black Adam" been the success he promised.
But its initial budget of $195 million ballooned with $40 million in reshoots,
and the marketing and other associated costs were another pretty penny. When the flick
bagged only $391 million at the worldwide box office, the possibility of a sequel evaporated.
It didn't help that people inside Warner Bros. Discovery were growing tired of Johnson, whose
demands were reportedly becoming increasingly intolerable. For example, he allegedly insisted
on being given a producer credit for "DC League of Super-Pets," an animated film in which Johnson
voices Krypto the Super-Dog. But then he failed to throw his marketing weight behind the movie
with anything close to the zeal he reserved for "Black Adam," leaving it to languish with a $23
million opening weekend. When "Black Adam" itself arrived, he demanded a bar featuring
his personal Teremana brand of tequila at the New York premiere. As one source put it to Variety,
Johnson was quickly becoming a liability the studio couldn't stomach,
and DC couldn't make the numbers work anymore.
"It's been a while since anyone made the world this nervous."
Cavill's Superman cameo in the "Black Adam" post-credits scene is allegedly
the result of Johnson's backroom dealings with CEO David Zaslav. But by the time
the film opened on October 26, 2022, the, uh, hierarchy had changed. The day before,
Warner Bros. Discovery had named James Gunn and Peter Safran as the new heads of DC Films.
Gunn and Safran planned for a soft reset of the whole franchise, and "Black Adam" bombing only
confirmed to them that neither Cavill nor Johnson should continue in their respective
roles. Backed by WB's top players, the pair had extensive decision-making power to do with the
franchise as they pleased. In December, they finally cut Cavill loose. Later that month,
Johnson confirmed that he wouldn't be returning as Black Adam any time soon either.
The future still looks murky for DC Films, though Gunn and Safran seem to have mostly
cleared the board of unwanted pieces, leaving them free to build a whole new hierarchy.