With his plans for the future greatly changed after Black Adam underperformed at the box office, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is reflecting on how to move forward after enduring failures in life. For several years, The Rock had been working on getting the feature film adaptation of Black Adam off the ground, putting in an untold amount of hard work to make it happen. He even finagled his way through enough red tape to bring Henry Cavill back as Superman for the film, knowing it would be a tremendous moment for fans.
Black Adam, unfortunately, was not the success that Johnson and Warner Bros. Discovery had been banking on. It wound up grossing under $400 million worldwide, and given the movie's high budget and marketing costs, this was seen as a box office bomb. There are conflicting reports over whether the film was profitable, but what's certain is that it came far short of expectations, coming in far below what the studio had seen with The Batman pulling in over $770 million earlier in the year.
There was more bad news to come for The Rock. James Gunn and Peter Safran have since been hired to steer the ship at DC Studios, and one of their first moves was to squash all plans to bring back Cavill's Superman in any new movies. Johnson would later announce that there'd be no Black Adam sequel, though he kept the door open to returning as the character by way of a multiverse appearance in the DCU.
The Rock Says He Has the Guts to Fail
Early into the new year, The Rock posted to Instagram a video where he speaks about failure and how people can learn from it. He doesn't specifically mention Black Adam, though what he says can be applied to the movie coming up short with his future plans for sequels all down the drain. The Rock says that having the "guts to fail" is a quality that makes winning that much more special.
"Having the guts to fail is far more powerful than having the desire to succeed," the caption reads in part. "Having the desire to succeed is very attractive. It’s sexy. While having the guts to fail is extremely uncomfortable. And sometimes it’s f’n scary. But guts over desire has served me all throughout my career — and when we put ourselves in positions to be uncomfortable - to have the guts to fail - we actually set ourselves up in a much more powerful way to WIN. It’s 2023. It’s our year. Guts over desire."
You can check out the post below, via The Rock on Instagram.