David Zaslav’s Talks with The Rock to Revamp DC Ended After ‘Black Adam’ Flopped

Warner Bros. has been trying for years to make its DC Comics movies a big hit, but nothing has really worked so far. For decades, different executives promised to make DC’s superheroes like Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman just as popular as Marvel’s stars.

But because of behind-the-scenes problems and creative clashes, DC never quite reached that level of success.

Now, the studio is trying again with a fresh start. The new Superman movie coming out this week is the centerpiece of their plan to bring DC back to life. Warner Bros. hopes this film will earn over $500 million worldwide.

While that’s less than Marvel’s biggest hits, it would still count as a strong success for DC. The movie is also meant to kick off a new DC movie universe. After Superman, there are plans for a Supergirl spin-off, a Green Lantern TV show, and more Batman movies.

This is a crucial moment for both DC and its parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery. CEO David Zaslav has talked often about his plan to fix DC, especially since the company’s stock price has fallen a lot since Warner and Discovery merged. He told Wall Street analysts that DC is “one of the biggest value creation opportunities for us” and “could and should be a game changer.”

Before Zaslav took over, Warner executives had pitched similar ideas to fix DC many times. But there was a lot of resistance from different groups who wanted control over parts of DC movies, TV shows, animation, and licensing. Dan DiDio, a longtime DC executive, said, “There was always friction pulling DC together because there were a lot of individual ideas, rather than one overarching vision.”

Zaslav started talking with people who had ideas on how to fix DC, including Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who starred in the DC movie Black Adam. Unfortunately, their discussions ended after Black Adam did poorly at the box office.

There were rumors that The Rock wanted to shake things up at DC by taking control and putting his own production company, Seven Bucks, in charge of the DC movie universe. According to an exclusive report by The Wrap, The Rock and Henry Cavill’s manager at the time, Dany Garcia, wanted to remove the head of DC Studios, Walter Hamada. But their plans were stopped when James Gunn and Peter Safran were brought in to run DC Studios.

The Wrap’s insiders say that in 2022, Johnson and Garcia met with Zaslav not only to discuss adding Superman to Black Adam but also to propose Seven Bucks running DC and replacing Hamada. However, someone close to Seven Bucks denied that the meeting was meant to pitch Garcia as a replacement for Hamada.

In the end, Garcia was not hired, and Johnson and Seven Bucks were pushed out after Gunn and Safran took over. Also, Henry Cavill fired Dany Garcia as his manager around that time.

What followed is well-known: Black Adam failed at the box office, James Gunn and Peter Safran rebooted the DC universe, and Henry Cavill was let go as Superman. Cavill had initially been told to tell fans he would return, but just weeks after that, he announced he wouldn’t continue, as the studio wanted a younger Superman for the new direction.

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