The following contains spoilers for DC League of Super-Pets, specifically, its end-credits scene.
Star Dwayne Johnson took a victory lap after DC League of Super-Pets opened atop the weekend box office, and teased the animated comedy in only the beginning of a new franchise.
"With the DC Super-Pets Universe we had an opportunity to build out this awesome animated universe in a big, fun, cool way," Johnson wrote late Sunday on Instagram. The actor voices Krypto the Superdog, as well as two surprise characters, introduced in the film's end-credits scene.
In DC League of Super-Pets, Johnson's Krypto teams with a shelter dog (Kevin Hart) and other animals -- among them, a potbellied pig and a red squirrel -- to rescue superheroes captured by Lex Luthor (Marc Maron). As Johnson reveals in his Instagram post, the end-credits scene depicts Superman (John Krasinski) and Krypto enjoying time together at a park, where they encounter antihero Black Adam and his loyal dog Anubis (both voiced by Johnson).
It's an obvious nod to Johnson's long-awaited Black Adam film, opening Oct. 21, of course.
“I believe it was Dwayne’s idea,” Jared Stern, co-writer and co-director of DC League of Super-Pets, told Polygon. “He thought it’d be fun to act against a darker version of Krypto. And we all laughed at that and thought, ‘Yeah, that’s gonna be super fun. It’s just perfect.’”
Super-Pets & Black Adam Are 'Just the Beginning'
However, Johnson seemed to suggest in his Instagram post that the sequence is more than a playful wink to DC movie fans. "At [Seven Bucks Productions], we have major plans to build out the Black Adam DC Universe and now the DC Super-Pets Universe with our partners [Warner Bros. Pictures] and [DC Comics], he wrote, "Super-Pets and Black Adam is just the beginning."
Seven Bucks is the production banner co-founded a decade ago by Johnson. The company has co-produced most of the actor's films over the past several years, as well as Shazam! and its upcoming sequel, Shazam! Fury of the Gods.
Warner Bros. has yet to hint at plans for a DC League of Super-Pets sequel. Although the film was, indeed, No. 1 in its opening weekend, its $23 million domestic box-office performance is perhaps best characterized as "solid but unremarkable." Overseas receipts lifted the film to $41.4 million globally.
For comparison, Warner Animation's The LEGO Batman Movie premiered in 2017 with to the tune of $53 million. In fairness, however, we should note it was an established property that arrived well before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Source: Instagram