After the super-serious tone and doom and gloom that defined the DCEU during the Zack Snyder years, Shazam! felt like a breath of fresh air by comparison, and didn’t feel like it was even part of the same franchise at all. The light-hearted and fun superhero coming-of-age comedy marked a huge tonal shift from what people had become accustomed to from Warner Bros.’ comic book output, and the end result saw it score overwhelmingly positive reviews as a result.
We know now that the brains behind the DCEU are in the midst of redefining the creative vision for the series, with the likes of Birds of Prey and Wonder Woman 1984 diversifying the style and tone even further, and no doubt the planned Shazam! sequel will look to take things to the next level.
But before Shazam! 2 hits theaters in 2022, there’s still the small matter of his arch-nemesis making his big screen debut, with Dwayne Johnson finally dragging Black Adam out of a decade stuck in development hell, with the actor already hitting the gym hard even by his standards, as well as making bold promises that the entire hierarchy of power in the DCEU is set to change.
Given how closely intertwined their histories are in the pages of comic books, there’s an air of inevitability about Shazam! and Black Adam facing off on the big screen at some point in the near future, and in a recent live Q&A on social media, Zachary Levi admitted that while he isn’t set to appear in Black Adam as he prepares for his own movie, he hinted that the eventual meeting of the two will draw from DC canon.
“Maybe we’ll get to pay off all of those Captain Marvel/Black Adam epic fights and storylines from the comic books.”
Even though the DCEU is reportedly set to shy away from crossovers in their upcoming slate, it would be a no-brainer to have Shazam! and Black Adam trade blows, although it seems unlikely that we’ll see it happen for several years at least.