Warner Bros./DC’s “Black Adam” will stay as the box office champ for a third weekend as it is projected by industry estimates to earn $17.5 million, topping the new Crunchyroll anime release “One Piece Film Red.”
Dwayne Johnson’s blockbuster continues to follow the trajectory of last fall’s Marvel release “Eternals” with an estimated total of $136 million after three weekends, a cume identical to Chloe Zhao’s November 2021 release.
Without a Chinese release, which still hasn’t been announced by Warner Bros., “Black Adam” is likely to finish with a global total of around $400 million, roughly breaking even as did Dwayne Johnson’s other DC release, “DC League of Super-Pets,” did this past summer.
“Black Adam” is likely to take a steep drop-off next weekend as the superhero film audience shifts over to Disney/Marvel’s “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” which is expected to have the largest opening weekend of the year and one of the largest of all time. Projections are targeting an opening of $175 million, but rival distributors expect the film to top $200 million.
Sony/Crunchyroll’s “One Piece Film Red” is the sole newcomer on the charts, earning $4.7 million through Friday as industry estimates project a $10 million opening from 2,410 theaters.
While that is roughly half of the $21.8 million opening that another Crunchyroll release, “Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero,” earned during the late August dead period for the box office, it is significantly higher than the $1.3 million total that “One Piece: Stampede” earned from an event release in 2019, showing how Crunchyroll has continued to draw a larger audience of anime fans to theaters and can now support wide releases for multiple films per year.