Shazam! Director Explains How DC Studios Changes Affected Fury of the Gods
Shazam! Fury of the Gods hits theaters this month, but the sequel will arrive under the not-so-auspicious cloud of DC Studios and its DC Universe reboot. Shazam! 2 is suddenly looking like it's hanging out there as an extraneous limb of a dying franchise. We already know that DC's The Flash will speed into theaters in June, and will totally reset the DC Universe into a new world built by DC Studios co-heads James Gunn and Peter Safran. So how has the launch of DC Studios ultimately affected Shazam! Fury of the Gods?
ComicBook.com got a chance to speak with Shazam! movie franchise director David F. Sandberg during the sequel's press junket this week – and of course we had to ask if the new plans for the DCU have affected Shazam! Fury of the Gods: "No, because that all happened after. The movie was delivered end of October, last year."
For anyone keeping track, Sandberg's statement is very true. Shazam! Fury of the Gods was originally supposed to film in mid-2020, for release in April 2022; the COVID-19 pandemic caused the first set of delays for the film, but Sandberg and Co. managed to get filming done by September of 2021. Warner Bros. Discovery ultimately decided to push the film from December 2022 to March 2023 in order to compensate for the delays in visual effects production; so yes, by the time DC Studios was being announced by Warner Bros. Discovery in Fall of 2022, Shazam! Fury of the Gods was already a done deal. The same holds true for Jason Momoa's Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, which wrapped filming in Janauray 2022.
However, Jason Momoa has basically rung the bell signaling that he could be done with Aquaman after the sequel, and re-enter the new DCU as Lobo. Shazam!, on the other hand, is a franchise that feels like it could easily be transported over to the new DCU (see also: Peacemaker, Amanda Waller). However, as David F. Sandberg tells it, no discussions about that future are being had right now, as he has only "talked about the marketing" of Shazam! 2 with Gunn and Safran, leading up to its release.
That said, David F. Sandberg did recently indicate how the future of Shazam! in the DCU could be decided. After one DC fan complained about having little motivation to see Fury of the Gods, knowing it could be a dead-end for the franchise, Sandberg posted the following message to remind fans: the power may be in their hands:
"[Shazam!] definitely won't [have a DCU future] if people don't go see the movie," Sandberg tweeted. "What I've been told is that there's nothing in the Shazam films that contradict the future plans for DC. So the possibility for more Shazam is there and if that's what you want your best bet is to go see the film."
Shazam! Fury of the Gods is set to be released exclusively in theaters on March 17th. Check out all of our interviews with the cast and crew.