Posted in: Movies, New Line Cinema, Shazam, Warner Bros | Tagged: movies, New Line Cinema, shazam: fury of the gods, Warner Bros

Shazam: Fury of the Gods – Zachary Levi Says The Second One is Better

Shazam! is still the best all-around DC movie, and no, we will not be taking comments on the matter. There are some that have come very close, The Suicide Squad for sure and Wonder Woman had a larger cultural impact, but Shazam! was the better movie. So it's a shame that Shazam: Fury of the Gods is on track to take so long to make it to the big screen. It got to the point that despite the fact that the movie doesn't come out for a year and a half from now, they are already done filming and in post-production because they couldn't wait any longer. They have kid actors and kids age, so they were on a timetable. So here we are a year and a half away, knowing that production has already wrapped. Star Zachary Levi has a movie coming out later this year called American Underdog, and he is currently doing press for that. Collider got the chance to talk to Levi about the film, and while he didn't give any specifics, Levi is an old hat at the spoiler game; he did reveal that he believes that the second one is even better than the first.

"I will say that I genuinely — and this is not just lip service — I'm really proud of the first one, I think we made a really, really good movie. I think the second one is better. I think that we had more time, we had more budget. We had, essentially, the entire cast returning, and we all knew our characters a little bit more; we could kind of sit into them a little bit more. Henry Gayden, who wrote the first script, wrote the second, and he did a fantastic job doing so. Everything just clicked even a little bit more and a little bit more. And also the kids have grown up a little bit more, so even the sensibilities of them become even slightly more mature which brings it closer to my or other people's adult minds, so there's even more connection there, I think. The action's great, the comedy's great, the relationships are great. The bad guys, Helen Mirren and Lucy Liu, are fantastic. I'm very proud of it. I want it to come out sooner than June of 2023."

Levi was pressed about Shazam: Fury of the Gods release date and how people are also hoping that DC and Warner Bros. will move the release up. Levi said that while he wishes they would move it up, he understands the scheduling and how you don't want to release things too close together.

"Fortunately, we are amongst a huge group of very cool characters and actors that play those characters. They're already more established in a lot of ways because of the DC movies that preexisted before we came in. So we're a little bit of a JV coming into the varsity squad, and there's a lot of titles that need to come out to the world. I get it; studios have to make a concerted effort about not cannibalizing your own titles. You can't release them too close to each other, otherwise you might cannibalize each other. Plus, you have to take into consideration all the other studios' releases and all that stuff. So that's where it is — but, you never know, maybe it'll come out sooner. Here's hoping and praying, I hope."

Another DC character making it to the big screen is Black Adam, and that character and Shazam have been interconnected for many years in the comics. When Levi was asked if he knew anything about a team-up or any sort of crossover, he dodged the question but said that there was some Twitter beef.

"I don't know Dwayne, I have no communication with him, but I know that we're all a part of the same, big, happy DC family, and I look forward to whatever cocktail parties we're all at together." However, he also bemusedly noted some in-character Twitter beef going on between the two characters: "There've been some funny little things back and forth in character on Twitter. Somebody had asked him, 'How could Shazam possibly stand up to Black Adam?' To which he replied, 'He doesn't.' But then he labels it 'Black Adam,' as if Black Adam is saying that."

There have been rumors of a movie with both of these characters for years, and before Black Adam became its own movie and Shazam: Fury of the Gods came into existence, they were supposed to meet up in some sort of fight or versus type of thing. We haven't heard anything about that for a long time, but maybe that is still in the cards somewhere down the line. If they're still going to do that while the kids are still kids in Shazam, they need to get on that soon. At this rate, they might be shooting that before Shazam: Fury of the Gods even makes it to the big screen.

Shazam: Fury of the Gods, directed by David F. Sandberg, stars Zachary Levi, Asher Angel, Jack Dylan Grazer, Djimon Hounsou, Rachel Zegler, Helen Mirren, Lucy Liu, Faithe Herman, Meagan Good, Grace Fulton, Ian Chen, Ross Butler, Jovan Armand, D. J. Cotrona, Marta Milans, and Cooper Andrews. It will be released on June 2, 2023

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