Black Adam looks set to retain its top spot at the box office over the Halloween weekend despite seeing a cataclysmic drop in footfall compared to its opening weekend. After opening to the less than spectacular tune of $67 million domestically, the Dwayne Johnson-led DCU kick-starter is looking to add around $ 24 million, which would mark a 63% drop-off weekend on weekend. However, helped by very little competition, this means that Black Adam will sit victorious atop the box office chart once again.

Many of the biggest movies have seen similar drops in footfall in their second weekends, with only the phenomenon that was Top Gun: Maverick being an exception to the rule. However, while Black Adam’s dip is not as high as either Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness or Thor: Love and Thunder, which both saw 67% drop off, the Marvel movies landed openings that were respectively thrice and double the box office of Black Adam to warrant such a downturn in audience numbers.

Black Adam’s second weekend will push the movie to a domestic haul of over $100 million, but it is not exactly the best start for Warner Bros. Discovery’s new path for the DCU. Even the appearance of Henry Cavill’s Superman doesn’t seem to be able to save Black Adam from dwindling into obscurity very quickly, especially when it is eclipsed by the arrival of Marvel Studios’ Black Panther: Wakanda Forever in a couple of weeks.

Related: Black Adam: How Much Does it Actually Change the DCEU

Is Black Adam the DCU Savior?

BlackAdamDwayneTheRockJohnson
Warner Bros. Pictures

As the only DCU release from Warner Bros. Discovery this year, with The Batman sitting outside the shared universe, Black Adam was hyped to be a blockbuster re-start of the comic book franchise. However, while the newly formed DC Studios will not really come into play until next year when new movies head into production, Black Adam has certainly underperformed against the expectations of many.

It is clear that Dwayne Johnson has done his best to put his all into Black Adam, but even a post-credits appearance by Superman and the promise of a new DC story beginning to play out hasn’t been able to turn the movie into more than a bog-standard offering that is clearly struggling to compete with the top movies of the year. After two weeks on release, a time when most comic book movies pull in their biggest crowds, the film has just scraped into the top 20 domestic movies of the year. In worldwide terms, it will reach a similar position after this weekend, but at more than double its current takings away from bothering the Top 10, it seems likely that Black Adam is going to end up as one of the year’s also-rans rather than a chart breaker.

How the future of the DCU will pan out is now in the hands of James Gunn and Peter Sarfan as the joint CEOs of DC Studios, although it is likely that next year’s returns of Aquaman and The Flash could provide an early boost to the franchise ahead of the full return of Henry Cavill’s Superman somewhere further down the line. It may be that it is not Black Adam, but the return of the Man of Steel that really saves the DCU.