Shazam 2 Sets A Horrible Record For DC
Shazam 2 is set to earn $30 million during its opening weekend, setting a new record for the lowest DC movie opening of all time, even lower than Black Adam.
If you’re a DC fan, this was meant to be a big weekend, thanks to the Shazam 2 release. The original Zachary Levi film was a comedic breath of fresh air amid all the darker DC movies of recent years, and many fans were hoping the sequel would one-up the original while giving us another awesome adventure with the goofiest DC hero this side of Booster Gold. Unfortunately, Deadline reports that the movie will make a disappointing $30 million for its opening weekend, which means this latest alternative to the Marvel Cinematic Universe isn’t going to soar nearly as high as Warner Bros. was hoping.
Of course, $30 million doesn’t seem like a very low amount to the average person, so why is this a big deal for Shazam 2? First, this is a full five million lower than the opening for the film that was projected four weeks ago. And that was already a fairly low projection, meant to account for the fact that the sequel would have a lot of competition (including Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania) and that Shazam himself is not the big audience draw that, say, Batman or Superman would be.
Another way to uncover how well Shazam 2 is doing is by comparing it to its predecessor. Accounting for Friday night plus previews, the second Shazam movie brought in $11.7 million. Meanwhile, the first film brought in $20.3 million during that same window, meaning the sequel started making 44 percent less than its predecessor.
And Warner Bros. did its best to give Shazam 2 a fighting chance. The movie was originally set to be released during the holiday season, but the studio adjusted the release date to move it firmly away from the hit James Cameron film Avatar: The Way of Water. In addition to simply avoiding the competition, this move would ostensibly help the film make more money due to selling more Imax and PLF tickets, but it looks like that won’t be enough to make a difference.
Some think that ticket sales might have been hurt by Zachary Levi’s surprising anti-Pfizer tweet, where he seemed to be speaking out against people taking the COVID-19 vaccine, but that likely didn’t make much of a dent in the overall sales. The bigger issue is likely the fact that James Gunn is ushering in a new era of DC movies, and it’s clear that Shazam (like Black Adam before him) will not play a part in the new universe. By comparison, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania may be a disappointment, but the introduction of Kang is important to the ongoing lore, making that movie important enough that most diehard fans couldn’t afford to skip it (something we can’t say about Shazam 2).
The real nail in the coffin for Shazam 2 is that, when the smoke clears, this sequel will likely lose money for the studio. And even the successful first movie only made a net profit of $75 million, which had some fans and studio bigwigs curious about whether that was enough to merit a sequel (something we now have the grim answer to). Shazam 2 will likely end up more in the red than the hero’s costume, meaning that we may see the end of Zachary Levi’s superhero career.
