The Rock’s producer promises Shazam! will be a lot of fun…

Ok, so it seems obligatory to start this article with ‘while Batman V Superman wasn’t well received by critics – mostly because it wasn’t as much fun as it should have been’, so we will. And did.

Anyway, it looks like the Shazam movie, starring Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnston as bad guy Black Adam, is going to be all about the fun according to Johnson’s producer, Hiram Garcia, a self-confessed comic book junkie.

With Suicide Squad, Wonder Woman, Justice League, Flash and Cyborg all on the way and Geoff Johns over seeing proceedings, it looks like DC felt a little burned by the BvS reviews and have sworn to brighten things up.

“We’re a good way into development,” says Garcia about the Shazam! movie, “We’re expecting a next draft soon which I think is really gonna put us in the zone that we’re hoping for.”

Garcia gets to flex his comic knowledge as he talks about the movie: “There’s a great opportunity between [Black Adam and Shazam]. The great thing with Shazam for me as a fan, I was always a fan of Superman and his mythology as I grew up. I remember it was Alex Ross’s Kingdom Come that was the first time that ever made me look at Shazam just differently. I just knew of Shazam, you know the name, you knew the word, but I thought Alex Ross… He portrayed him and drew him in that epic kind of conflict that him and Superman ultimately had. It just made me look at Shazam in way like this is a bad motherf—er.”

But what about the fun aspect? DC believe they need to lighten up (for the record, while I had issues with BvS, tone wasn’t one of them and I’d rather not have DC become Marvel-like), will this movie be part of the lighter approach?: “That whole world, as well as Black Adam as you start looking into Black Adam, so our take on that world is first and foremost, movies like that can be grounded and can have real stakes but can still be fun.

“That’s the place we always want it to come from. We have a character in Shazam that is a boy who is in this man’s body who is having the ultimate fulfillment that I think all comic book fans and everyone can associate with. Like, what if you wake up one day and you can just do all this great stuff? And then on the other side, you have this force of nature who is really anchored by what he lost in his family and that thread that he’s bringing with him throughout this journey. There’s a real grounding there. That combination of youth and enthusiasm and being in new to a world and then the place that Adam’s coming from. It makes for a great dynamic that not only allows us to have not only real stakes, real story, and real emotion, but a ton of fun in the process. There’s no reason that there should ever be a version of this story told that’s devoid of that. That’s our goal in doing this: following the path of the films that have been coming out and have done such a good job.”

In conclusion, he adds:”I promise you dude, we’re not gonna f— this up! My vision is so clear for this story and this movie. As story tellers, you sometimes get on projects but this has always been a priority. I’ve been carrying the Black Adam torch for so many years before we finally locked it in and I’m telling you we’re gonna knock this thing out of the park. It’s gonna be a blast and it’s gonna be a dope ride, so get ready!”

Shazam! is currently set for release April 4, 2019.

Source: Comicbook