Shazam!/Black Adam Franchise Drama
This last weekend we got Shazam! Fury of the Gods, the thirteenth movie in the DCEU. But the third movie in this pocket universe, with Shazam! and Black Adam. And ever since Fury of the Gods reports have started to come surrounding drama between these two movies. I find it kind of interesting, so what are my thoughts on it? Let’s find out!
NOTE: This movie will contain SPOILERS for both Black Adam and Fury of the Gods. So if you haven’t seen those movies, you have been warned!
What Happened?:
If you’ve seen Fury of the Gods and you stuck around for the credits. You know that Harcourt and Economos from The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker were recruiting Shazam! to join the JSA. You get some nice humor thrown in there, it’s a really solid mid-credit scene. But after the movie came out, Zachary Levi has been vocal and public about what was originally going to happen. Basically the original idea was to have Hawkman and Cyclone from Black Adam be in that scene to recruit Shazam!, Aldis Hodge and Quintessa Swindell were going to be in the mid-credit scene. But Dwayne Johnson basically said no you can not do that. He refused to have any JSA characters be in that scene, because he wanted to keep his Black Adam universe and Shazam!’the world is separate from one another. And so literally 2-3 days before they were going to shoot the scene, Johnson said no so they had to come up with Plan B, enter Harcourt and Economos.
Another important detail that came out, Dwayne Johnson said no to Zachary Levi being in Black Adam’s mid-credit scene. Black Adam’s mid-credit saw the return of Henry Cavill’s Superman. That wasn’t always the case, that was originally Zachary Levi in that scene, setting up a Shazam! vs Black Adam movie to come in the future. But Dwayne Johnson said no and wanted to set-up a fight between him and Superman. It doesn’t sound like Zachary Levi has been too happy with all of this. Several days back he did a live stream on Instagram basically revealing all of this information. And it sounds like Zachary Levi wants to keep on being this character, he wants to do a lot with the character. But it doesn’t sound like Dwayne Johnson and his team have any interest in Zachary Levi’s Shazam
Dwayne Johnson’s Ego: I think the big problem with this is one thing, Dwayne Johnson has a very big ego. To state the obvious, Dwayne Johnson is one of the biggest movie stars out there. He’s made several highly successful blockbusters over the years that have made bonkers amounts of money. So I think his ego is getting in the way of this drama, and honestly he’s one of the main causes of that. Dwayne Johnson wanted his version of Black Adam to fight Superman. Obviously, Superman is one of the most iconic superheroes of all time. He’s one of the most beloved and recognizable superheroes ever created. So Dwayne Johnson wanted to fight him, he wanted to fight a very famous A-list superhero. He brought back Henry Cavill’s to make this happen, he knew this was something the fans would want. Fans loved him for that, that was the thing about Black Adam that people talked about the most. Basically he wanted to reshape the entire DCEU just to have this epic showdown, that’s very selfish and self centered. I look at this and I go, you don’t have as much power as you say you do. You don’t control as much of Hollywood or studios as you think you do Mr. The Rock, I’m sorry but you don’t. Black Adam is Shazam!’s arch nemesis, Black Adam is Batman’s Joker, Spider-Man’s Green Goblin. But Dwayne Johnson doesn’t want to fight this B-list superhero, he wants to fight this A-list superhero. He doesn’t care about what happens with Zachary Levi’s Shazam!, he just doesn’t want them to meet or cross paths. I get that Dwayne Johnson loves Superman, I get that he might want to cross paths with Henry Cavill’s Superman, but I don’t think he should just shut-out Zachary Levi.
What Shazam 2 Should Have Been: If you saw my blog post a couple of days ago, you know that Shazam! Fury of the Gods has kind of been bombing at the box office. We do now have the numbers for this past weekend, the movie dropped 67.8%. Not as big of a drop as I was expecting, but that’s still not a good sign. It just now crossed $100 million worldwide, doesn’t like it’s going to pass $80 million domestically. Black Adam is also kind of a bomb, it had a $250 million budget and only made about $392 million worldwide. And with both Black Adam and Fury of the Gods bombing, they should have done a Shazam! vs Black Adam movie. That movie probably would have made a lot more money. At San Diego Comic Con in 2019 they should have done a panel announcing this movie, confirming that Summer 2021, that the sequel is Shazam! vs Black Adam. And as a surprise appearance, bring out Henry Cavill. If they did a movie starring Zachary Levi, Dwayne Johnson, and Henry Cavill that movie would have been very successful. But now that’s never going to happen, we are never going to get Zachary Levi to fight Dwayne Johnson. Which I think is a big waste on their part, and Dwayne Johnson’s part.
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