Shazam! star Asher Angel is no stranger to making the transformation from young person to adult, having appeared as Billy Batson in the 2019 DC Comics movie. Angel “transformed” into Zachary Levi when he said the magic word in that film, but the young actor made a different kind of adult transformation earlier this week, appearing on Nickelodeon’s The Substitute. In the series, a hidden camera TV show in the vein of “Undercover Boss,” celebrities are transformed into very different looking people and disguised to fool unsuspecting students in classrooms as eccentric and mean substitute teachers. Asher Angel appeared on this week’s new episode in a very different looking get up and his Shazam! director had something to say.
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Nickelodeon posted a tease of what Angel would look like in the new episode which David F. Sandberg teased looked nothing like Zachary Levi, but himself. The director tweeted: “Here I was thinking an older Asher Angel would look like Zachary Levi when clearly I should have played Shazam all along.” Get a look at his hilarious transformation, which certainly does look Sandberg-esque, below!
Sandberg, Angel, and Levi will all reunite later this year for the sequel even though it’s not scheduled to be released until April 1, 2022. Levi has previously lobbied to film the sequel to the movie quickly so that the young actors involved don’t grow up too quickly.
Here I was thinking an older @asherangel would look like @ZacharyLevi when clearly I should have played Shazam all along. https://t.co/lePBrDux7Z
— David F. Sandberg (@ponysmasher) February 8, 2020
“If we don’t shoot another movie real quick, then they’re just gonna be men,” Levi said of his co-stars Asher Angel and Jack Dylan Grazer. “There’s no point in saying ‘Shazam’ to transform, they’re already transformed! So that’s all I can tell you about the sequel, but I’m very excited to get into it, making it, and I hope you all enjoy it when we do.”
Speaking in a past interview with Backstory Magazine, Sandberg hinted towards the return of classic villain Mister Mind, included as an Easter egg in Shazam!’s post-credit scene, and even more of the “Shazam Family” that made their big screen debut in the 2019 movie.
“It feels like we could do more with the Shazam family,” Sandberg said. “We just introduced them, but you could explore how they work as a family of heroes. And we threw in a little mid-credits scene with Mister Mind, and you could go down that road. Or you could introduce another villain. There are plenty of ones to choose from in the Shazam world.”
Shazam 2 will arrive in theaters about three and a half months after the Black Adam film, which stars Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as the titular antihero, who also happens to be Shazam’s rival. Black Adam is scheduled to be released on December 22, 2021.
