After Abysmal Opening Weekend, ‘Shazam! Fury Of The Gods’ Plummets In Its Second Weekend At The Box Office
Shazam! Fury of the Gods crashed in its second weekend at the box office following an abysmal opening weekend.
In its opening weekend the film grossed a paltry $30.1 million at the domestic box office a far cry from the first film’s $53.5 million opening weekend box office haul back in April 2019.
Things did not get better for the film in its second weekend as the film saw a horrific 69% drop at the box office. It only grossed an estimated $9.3 million in its second weekend.
The film has grossed $45.9 million domestically and another $56.1 million internationally for a global gross of $102 million.
Box office analyst OMB Reviews shared his thoughts on why the film is doing so poorly at the box office, “The film really isn’t so bad as to lose that kind of money. I’ve seen much worse films than Shazam! 2. That being said it’s not a good film, and it’s definitely not a great film. And so it makes complete sense to me why people are just not going to see this movie.”
He continued, “And so you add on to that the fact that they have brought in someone like James Gunn and that he has gone out of his way to say really stupid things like, ‘Hey, yeah, Henry Cavill, he’s gone. This person’s gone etc…’ Why would anyone actually want to show up to these movies to support them when they know why would I want to invest the time and money when I know already the plan going forward or at the very least who is not in the plan going forward.”
He added, “And we’re seeing this ultimately lead to some massive financial losses for Warner Bros.”
To OMB Reviews’ point, Gunn made it clear that the upcoming The Flash film would reset the DCU, implying that characters like Shazam would more than likely not be part of his new vision for the DCU.
While announcing what the first chapter of his DCU slate would look like, Gunn said, “First, we have Shazam! Fury of the Gods. Shazam has always been off kind of in his own part of the DCU so he connects very well. That moves directly into The Flash, a fantastic movie that I really love, that resets the entire DCU universe.”
On top of Gunn announcing that Shazam has always been off on his own, but would connect very well, something that doesn’t really make sense and that The Flash would be resetting the DCU going forward, DC split ways with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson following a poor performance at the box office for his Black Adam film.
Black Adam is the primary nemesis to Captain Marvel aka Shazam and seeing Black Adam get scrapped signaled Shazam would be shortly behind it.
Johnson announced the end of Black Adam in a post to social media back in December. He wrote, “James Gunn and I connected, and Black Adam will not be in their first chapter of storytelling. However, DC and Seven Bucks have agreed to continue exploring the most valuable ways Black Adam can be utilized in future DC Multiverse chapters.”
He added, “These decisions made by James and DC leadership represent their vision of DCU through their creative lens.”
On top of all the drama at DC, the film received mediocre ratings from moviegoers. Shazam! Fury of the Gods received a B+ CinemaScore. For comparison, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantuamnia received an even worse B score while John Wick: Chapter 4 received an A.
Not only did it receive a mediocre CinemaScore, but it’s IMDb User Rating is a paltry 6.6.
For comparison, the first Shazam! film had a CinemaScore of A, and the IMDb user score was nearly half a point higher at 7.0.
And while the first film had a slightly higher user score, it does beg the question if moviegoers were indeed interested in a second film in the first place.
The first film only grossed $140.3 million domestically and $223.1 million internationally for a global gross of $363.5 million. The film did indeed make money as its production budget was only $85 million.
However, the second film also abandoned the core tenets of the first film with the film’s director David F. Sandberg explaining, “On the first one we had a lower budget and it was a smaller movie.”
He added, “It felt like, ‘We can’t really compete with the other superhero movies for action and scale, so we have to focus on character and humour – what makes it different.’ On this one we got more resources so we could actually compete with the other superhero movies.”
RELATED: ‘Shazam! Fury Of The Gods’ To Be “A Lot More Forthright About Pedro Being Gay”
On top of this the film’s scriptwriter claimed the film would make it clear that Billy Batson’s foster brother, Pedro, was gay.
Henry Gayden told Dorkaholics, “The only new addition for this movie is being a lot more forthright about Pedro being gay. And that was hinted at in the first movie very subtly.”
Gayden added, “And I thought it was really important and really, really fought for us including that and bringing that to the fore in this movie.”
Obviously, another contributing factor was stiff competition in its second week with John Wick: Chapter 4 hauling in $73.8 million domestically, another $64 million internationally for a global gross of $137.8 million in its opening weekend.
What do you make of Shazam! Fury of the Gods’ terrible second weekend at the box office?
More About:Movies
Read this Next
