Box Office Update: Dwayne Johnson on track for his best solo opening

Friday numbers have began trickling in giving us an idea of how the weekend is looking. Black Adam had a solid $25 million Friday after a strong $7.6 million made from Thursday previews marking the best opening day ever for a Dwayne Johnson led film. This beats his previous best Hobbs & Shaw by a slim margin, which had a $23.6 million opening day. The good news for Black Adam is that it appears critics and audiences seem to be split on this one. The film currently sits at 42% on Rotten Tomatoes yet has an 89% audience score and a B+ cinemascore. It seems the one thing critics didn’t like about the film was that it was trying too hard to be a crowd pleaser, is the thing that audiences are enjoying about it.

Right now the numbers indicate a $60 million start as movies of this caliber are generally front loaded. However, with the appeal of Dwayne Johnson and the fact that comic book films tend to play well with families, I still think this one can get to the $65 million mark this weekend. However with a reported $195 million production budget before marketing costs, I’m not sure this one will ultimately be a money maker for the studio. As I understand it though, this film is meant to be the new launching point of the DCEU and as such is laying the groundwork for future films to over perform which would then, in hindsight, turn Black Adam into a success story because as the adage goes: You gotta spend money to make money!

Coming in second place is the Julia Roberts/ George Clooney romantic comedy Ticket To Paradise with a $5.5 million Friday on its way to a projected $14 million opening. I will be honest, I thought this one was going to be a bigger hit out the gate. I even thought my $20 million prediction was a bit soft as these are two leading stars that generally have no problems finding an audience. The good news is: this film will have legs. Reviews have been lukewarm (including our own JimmyO’s 5/10 review) but the audience score is high at 86% and the cinemascore is strong with an A-. With its older skewing demographic who are generally not rush out to theaters on opening weekend kinds of people, this one should enjoy a steady stream of income for the foreseeable future.

Third and fourth place are a a battle between evil and evil as Smile and Halloween Ends duke it out for those October dollars. As of right now it looks like Smile has the edge with a potential $8.9 weekend while Halloween Ends, as predicted, is having a massive second weekend drop off of over 75% and just an $8.7 million weekend. Yeah, it seems they truly bungled this final Halloween film.

Did you make it out to theaters yet this weekend or is still in your plans of things to do? If so, let us know your thoughts on what you saw (or plan on seeing) and don’t forget to check back tomorrow when we have a full run down of this weekend’s box office numbers.