Dwayne Johnson’s Seven Bucks Productions almost exclusively develop projects for the actor to star in, with the notable exception of Shazam!, which remains the only movie put out by the company so far that doesn’t feature the world’s biggest movie star in an onscreen capacity.
Of course, that’s no coincidence when Zachary Levi’s superhero happens to be the arch-nemesis of Black Adam, which finally comes to theaters next summer, almost fifteen years after Johnson first signaled his intentions to play the role on the big screen.
A crossover is as close to inevitable as it gets, with Levi positively giddy at the prospect of going one-on-one with The Rock in the comic book genre, and producer Hiram Garcia explained to ScreenRant in a recent interview why it was important to establish the characters individually before setting them on a collision course.
“I think once we realized we wanted to separate Black Adam and Shazam!, where we were trying to introduce both of them in the same movie, and obviously realizing not only are both characters totally so different I think in the kind of story you want to tell around them, but they’re just both require so much space in terms of wanting to really introduce them to the world. And once we were able to separate them, things really started to pick up.”
It hasn’t been confirmed, but nobody would be shocked if Black Adam were to feature a nod towards Shazam! Fury of the Gods, which arrives in June 2023. Sitting on two such popular figures without having at least a loose plan in mind for a face off would be ludicrous, but we might be waiting on it for a while depending on what the DCEU has in store.