DC Splits ‘Shazam!’ Into Two Films to Accommodate Dwayne Johnson’s Awesomeness
If you smell what The Rock’s been cookin’ (i.e. if you follow him) on social media, then you know that the charismatic and insanely busy actor recently had a very good meeting over at DC about the long-awaited Shazam! movie. (No, not like that make-believe ’90s movie.) Apparently, that meeting went so well that the studio has reportedly split the film into two projects — or, more likely, they realized the error in thinking they could just cast Dwayne Johnson as a super-villain in someone else’s movie.
Deadline published a brief but intriguing update on Shazam!, which will now be split into two films starring Dwayne Johnson as Black Adam. According to the report, Johnson’s villain “proved vibrant enough” to warrant his own film — which, like, no doy. You don’t sign The Rock to co-star in some other guy’s movie; he is the movie. It’s easy to imagine that a few things happened in the meeting Johnson referenced in this tweet from last week:
1. DC and Geoff Johns had a real “OH S—T DUH” moment, in which they realized they were this close to passing up a prime business opportunity; The Rock isn’t just an A-list star — he’s an investment. 2. Johnson compromised with something along the lines of, “Listen, fellas, we all know I’m going to be the reason to see this movie.” He then presented a pie chart (because The Rock loves pie), which shows that 96% of the audience is made up of people who want to see The Rock in a superhero movie, two percent are Redditors who think that Shaq Shazam! movie is real and proves the existence of alternate timelines, and one percent are people who actually love the Shazam! comic-books. 3. Profit.
Clearly, Black Adam deserves his own film — and though DC’s last villain-centric piece, Suicide Squad, didn’t quite meet expectations at the box-office, it’s hard to say no to Dwayne Johnson. It’s also hard to imagine a scenario in which the actor, who is very involved with the development of his projects, would allow this movie to totally suck. Even San Andreas had its charms.