Is DC purposely sitting on an almost guaranteed animated success? Plus, Fury of the Gods didn’t need to give a damn about Black Adam when it already had the superpowers of Helen Mirren.
Does DC Studios already own an animated property to rival Sony’s Spiderverse?
The DCU is going to be well stocked with Bat-Men once James Gunn’s new DCU kicks off with the release of The Flash this summer. Ben Affleck and Michael Keaton (at the very least) will be appearing in the almost sure-to-be blockbuster DCU debut, and Robert Pattinson will also still be wearing his cowl in the Matt Reeves-directed “Elseworlds” of The Batman. But the studio may have one more money-making bat up its belfry.
According to THE HOT MIC podcast, F9 writer Daniel Casey was conscripted by former DC Studios CEO Walter Hamada to pen an animated Batman Beyond movie based on the beloved 1990s animated series intended to compete directly with Sony’s wildly successful Spiderverse franchise. The status is not known, but it hasn’t been officially canceled, meaning there’s a chance James Gunn might be sitting on a script that features one of the best-beloved characters to emerge from Warner Bros. golden age of animation in the early 1990s.
Gunn has gone on the record as saying he wants animation to continue to be a big part of the studio’s efforts, so if he does have the script, one can only guess why he hasn’t announced it yet — unless it was to keep attention on the upcoming live-action DCU reboots. That, or he didn’t want to be deafened by the squeals of DC Animated Universe fans the world over.
Did ‘Black Adam’ influence ‘Shazam! Fury of the Gods’ at all?
The Rock might know what he’s cooking, but the makers of Shazam! Fury of the Gods weren’t hungry for it at all. Six months ago, it might have seemed a dangerous bet indeed not to be eager to have some sort of synergy happen between Dwayne Johnson’s Black Adam and the Shazamily film franchise. Now it’s looking more like the filmmakers dodged a lightning bolt-shaped bullet.
Good fortune aside, it’s almost incomprehensible that there wasn’t any crossover at all between the films, considering Shazam! aka Captain Marvel has been Black Adam’s biggest enemy since the characters first met in the 1940s. but director David F. Sandberg easily dismissed any involvement with the Rock during an interview with SlashFilm, stating “we knew they were going to be separate, that Black Adam was sort of doing their own thing.”
All well and good — after all, if The Joker can appear in an origin film that doesn’t even have Batman in it, then the rules have obviously changed. But one hopes for longtime fans of Shazam that James Gunn can figure out a way to get the two rivals up on the same screen in the DCU — even if The Rock won’t like it.
Hellen Mirren is the real superpower in ‘Shazam! Fury of the Gods’ according to director David F. Sandberg
Move over, Zachary Levi. There’s a new superpower in town — classically-trained Oscar winner Dame Helen Mirren, DBE. Mirren is set to make her DC debut as Hespera, the daughter of the Greek God Atlas who comes to reclaim the power of the gods from Shazam and his Shazamily in Shazam! Fury of the Gods. In a recent interview with Slashfilm, Fury of the Gods director David F. Sandberg revealed that Dame Helen was as committed to her role as any MCU gym rat.
“She’s such a trouper. She wanted to do her own stunts and everything and she does a lot of it,” Sandberg said. “We put her on wires and got her up in the air and everything. She’s hardcore.” Longtime Mirren fans will not be surprised to find out that she can hold her own even alongside seasoned veterans like Lucy Liu, who portrays her sister, Kalypso. After all, the acting legend isn’t exactly a stranger to action films. She’s appeared in two (going on three) Fast & Furious installments, for heaven’s sake.
In any case, it’s good to know she’ll be in fighting shape to take on Harrison Ford in the next season of 1923.