The Rock Wanted To Keep Shazam From Appearing In Black Adam

Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson’s much-awaited Black Adam is finally set for a release. He’d been in talks of playing the character as far back as 2007. Johnson has made quite an impact in Hollywood with his roles in the Fast & Furious series as well as a whole host of action-adventure flicks.

Black Adam recently saw a huge promotion at the San Diego Comic-Con. Adam will get his proper origin story in the film and will expand the list of DCEU characters with the addition of Hawkman, Doctor Fate, Cyclone, Atom Smasher, and Isis.

Johnson recently expressed to Vanity Fair that the first pitch for the character included him in the 2019 Shazam flick. Seeing as Black Adam is the arch-nemesis to Shazam, it makes complete sense. However, the star felt that it was unfair to the character of Adam.

When the first draft of the movie came to us, it was a combination of Black Adam and Shazam: Two origin stories in one movie. Now that was the goal — so it wasn’t a complete surprise. But when I read that, I just knew in my gut, ‘We can’t make this movie like this. We would be doing Black Adam an incredible disservice.’ It would’ve been fine for Shazam having two origin stories converge in one movie, but not good for Black Adam.

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Black Adam is quite a core character in the DC universe, though an anti-hero getting his own big-budget flick is quite a stretch. Fans passed on their criticism to Johnson’s comments, as the two characters are bound to face each other at some point in the future.

The Rock got his way after he made some calls and landed himself a solo flick. Black Adam is introducing some huge characters from the Justice Society of America, so it makes sense that the movie has its own separate trajectory.

The actor has also talked about a possible angle of Black Adam with Superman. The second part of Shazam is also going to release pretty soon, and the character has been slightly teased for it. It seems there’s quite a lot of creative space between the convergence of these two fated competitors just yet.

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