It may have taken longer than the studio would have wanted, but Warner Bros. and DC’s cinematic universe is finally starting to find itself creatively. Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice and Justice League were two movies that tried to run before they could walk, packing in so much story and characters that they were ready to burst at the seams, while Suicide Squad famously suffered at the hands of studio interference.
The billion dollar success of Aquaman and the rave reviews that greeted the release of Shazam! have gone some way to rehabilitating the franchise’s reputation with fans and critics alike, and now Zachary Levi has made it more than clear that he would be delighted to partner up with his fellow comic book heroes, saying:
“I love a good team movie, right? We all love a good team movie, that’s why The Avengers did a zillion dollars at the box office. If we get to make another Justice League, and Shazam gets to be in the Justice League, I would lose my mind. I think it would be so much fun. And in lieu of that, if DC and Warner Brothers and New Line find it cool to either have other DC heroes in my movies or I get to go and make cameos in their movies, I’d love to do that, too. I just love that I get to be an actor and I get to wear spandex and a cape and pretend to fly. Like, it’s the stupidest job ever, it’s amazing. I can’t recommend it enough.”
As well as dropping these not-so-subtle hints about future crossovers, Levi also revealed why Dwayne Johnson’s Black Adam won’t show up until the final installment in the planned Shazam! trilogy, despite Johnson having signed on to play the character all the way back in 2014.
“Because he’s like the ultimate bad guy for Shazam. Like Shazam and Black Adam, they’re doppelgängers right, the evil twin to who I am. So that’s got to be like the final battle. If we do that in the second movie, then where do we go after that? It would just be a movie of us sitting around playing video games for the third one, that would be very boring. Or not. I’m a very interesting video game player. So yeah, I think that’s the idea. We’ll definitely cross over – the plan is to get there, but just to pace it out however it needs to pace out.”
Essentially, this is the exact opposite approach to what the DCEU had been trying previously, and bringing these characters together in a more organic fashion instead of shoehorning them into each other’s movie is only going to benefit the franchise in the long run.