As far as we’ve been led to believe, which has admittedly been driven almost entirely by Henry Cavill rumors and the fact Seven Bucks produced Shazam! and sequel Fury of the Gods, Black Adam is part of mainline DCEU canon.
However, it would appear as though star Dwayne Johnson is planning to head down the Inception route to create a franchise within a franchise. Sure, Matt Reeves may also have something similar in the works with The Batman and its assorted offshoots, but Robert Pattinson’s Caped Crusader exists in a corner all on his own.
As for Black Adam? Well, the movie itself doesn’t release until October, but Johnson’s massive frame is descending upon San Diego Comic-Con this weekend, and he may just have a surprise or two in store. Speaking to Den of Geek, the A-list megastar hinted that his long-awaited debut in the superhero genre is just the beginning.
“The whole goal was that our film was going to set off a larger universe, where we were able to introduce the JSA and then also build from there. If audiences respond to these characters—which we believed that they would, and now we see that they do—we want to honor their mythologies and build out their stories on their own in terms of spin-offs, movies, TV shows, and things like that. That was always important.”
Black Adam is destined for success given that it features the world’s biggest and most popular star in cinema’s most consistently lucrative genre, but if everyone hates the entirety of the JSA lineup and the film gets panned, that expansion may be dead in its tracks. Obviously, that’s the worst case scenario, so don’t be surprised if there’s much more to come from The Rock’s corner of the DCEU.