DCEU fans may have been left devastated by the latest release calendar reshuffle, but one of the few positives saw Shazam! Fury of the Gods moved forward by six months to December 16 of this year.
Director David F. Sandberg wrapped principal photography back in August 2021, so the second outing for Zachary Levi’s title hero is in the fortunate position of hitting theaters during the reliably lucrative festive season without having to rush through post-production for the sake of making a locked-in debut.
There’s a fiercer battle for screentime second time around, though, with Fury of the Gods introducing a trio of villains played by Helen Mirren, Lucy Liu, and Rachel Zegler, all of whom are set to terrorize Billy Batson’s superpowered alter-ego as daughters of Atlas.
That doesn’t mean the Shazam Family will be cast to the sidelines, as Meagan Good explained to PopCulture, when revealing she’s set for an expanded role as the enhanced version of Darla Dudley.
“I’m excited about Shazam! because a big thing for me was like, I want little girls to know that the little Black girls, to see themselves in superheroes. “That’s something in terms of Black female superheroes that we haven’t had until the last couple years outside of Eartha Kitt playing Catwoman, you know? But other than that, we hadn’t really had any consistent superhero to the point of where it was more of a norm and less of a big deal when you see it.”
With a little over eight months to go until Shazam! Fury of the Gods arrives, it shouldn’t be too long until we see the first full-length trailer for the blockbuster second installment, which will finally give us the ins and outs of the storyline.