Dwayne Johnson’s Black Adam is set to be a pivotal installment in the DCEU, placing the world’s biggest movie star in cinema’s most bankable genre for the first time. Well, technically second seeing as the animated DC League of Super-Pets is arriving in theaters two months beforehand, but you get the point.
Not only that, but it’s the franchise’s first all-out cosmic blockbuster, leaning far heavier into the magical, mystical and intergalactic than ever before. Most modern depictions in the comic books position Black Adam as a corrupted antihero betrayed by those closest to him who seeks revenge for the death of his family while trying to restore his reputation, so Jaume Collet-Serra’s epic is going to unfold on a massive scale.
In fact, we’re now hearing from our sources – the same ones who told us Ben Affleck would be returning as Batman in The Flash long before it was confirmed – that Black Adam will reportedly feature flashbacks to the thriving planet of Krypton, indirectly tying it to the Superman mythos in the process.
Of course, there’ve been no shortage of rumors and speculation that Dwayne Johnson is set to single-handedly revive the SnyderVerse and rope in Henry Cavill’s Big Blue Boy Scout for a cameo appearance, but his upcoming DCEU debut doesn’t necessarily have to reference the Man of Steel during its purported Kryptonian interludes.
It could be used to help set the stage for how far-reaching the implications of the story will be once The Rock sets out on his rampage of retribution, positioning Black Adam as a badass that’s been around for millennia, and one who’s more than familiar with many other planets across the galaxy outside of his native Kahndaq.