Dwayne Johnson was attached for many years to play DC’s antihero character Black Adam in one project or another.
Back in 2014, the “Shazam” film went into development, and the project was initially aiming to serve as an origin for both the Shazam and Black Adam characters.
The pairing isn’t unusual due to their heavily shared history in the comics, but the idea was scrapped with the plan then being to do solo “Shazam” and “Black Adam” films.
Speaking with Vanity Fair recently, Johnson revealed he and his team were the ones that basically said they didn’t want to share a screen with Shazam and pushed for what became solo films for both characters:
“When the first draft of the movie came to us, it was a combination of Black Adam and Shazam: Two origin stories in one movie. Now that was the goal – so it wasn’t a complete surprise.
But when I read that, I just knew in my gut, ‘We can’t make this movie like this. We would be doing Black Adam an incredible disservice.’ It would’ve been fine for Shazam having two origin stories converge in one movie, but not good for Black Adam.
I made a phone call. I said, ‘I have to share my thoughts here. It’s very unpopular…’ because everybody thought, ‘Hey, this script is great, let’s go make this movie.’ I said, ‘I really think that you should make ‘Shazam!,’ make that movie on its own in the tone that you want. And I think we should separate this as well.'”
Warner Bros. Pictures agreed to Johnson’s request. The result was a first “Shazam” film that was well received, with a sequel on the way shortly. Meanwhile, Aldis Hodge, Noah Centineo, Sarah Shahi, Marwan Kenzari and Pierce Brosnan co-star with Johnson in the “Black Adam” film, which arrives in cinemas on October 21st.
