‘Shazam!’ DVD Could Have at Least 20 Minutes of Deleted Scenes

Shazam! is currently in the middle of its theatrical run, bringing Billy Batson’s origin story to life and charming the hearts of many in the process. According to one of the film’s crew members, there’s even more that didn’t make it into the film’s theatrical cut.

In a recent interview with CinemaBlend, Shazam! editor Michel Aller spoke about what moments didn’t make it into the film. As Aller teased, there could be up to 20 minutes of deleted scenes on the film’s home release, including a moment early on in the film between Billy Batson (Asher Angel) and Mary Bromfield (Grace Fulton).

“We had a lot of material.” Aller revealed. “When you buy the DVD, you’ll be able to see, I think we have 20-24 minutes of deleted scenes. And one of the scenes that regretfully we had to pull out was a scene between young Billy and Mary, when he’s about to sneak out. It’s just a really touching scene, but it came so early in the movie, and we were trying to get to get to the Shazam character, that we couldn’t put everything that we liked at the front of the movie. So that was one scene that we pulled out. I’m glad there are DVDs out there so we can show these great scenes.”

Granted, there’s no telling exactly how much-deleted content will ultimately make its way onto Shazam!‘s home release, but the notion that there’s so much to work with will surely delight fans. As it is, the telling of Billy’s origin story has evolved a lot since the project was first announced, with the earliest versions of the film also having a larger role for Black Adam (Dwayne Johnson).

“By the time I got the script, Black Adam was no longer a part of the initial Shazam! offering of this first film and I think that was a very intelligent decision made by everyone involved, including The Rock, who is still to this point attached to play Black Adam,” Zachary Levi, who stars as the titular superhero, explained to ComicBook.com. “Because trying to do two origin stories that you’d really — and by the way, our movie does that a little bit. You get some origin for Sivana but you’d have to spend a heck of a lot more explaining Black Adam and explaining Billy Batson and Shazam! and so its like how did we get all that without feeling like we’re diluting everything. So, the collective powers that be all were like ‘Hey, let’s just, we’ll break it up,’ so by the time I saw a script it was Shazam! and Sivana was the baddie.”

Shazam! is in theaters now. Upcoming DC movies include Joker on October 10th, Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) on February 7, 2020, Wonder Woman 1984 on June 5, 2020, The Batman on June 25, 2021, The Suicide Squad on August 6, 2021, and Aquaman 2 on December 16, 2022.