‘Shazam!’ Costume Changed a Lot While Filming

Fans finally got their first official look at Zachary Levi in full costume for Shazam! last month and while suit has received positive feedback from fans, it turns out that the official suit went through a lot of changes during filming for the upcoming DC film.

In an interview with the Film Riot Podcast (via Heroic Hollywood), Shazam! director David F. Sandberg explained that the suit changed quite a bit before and during production before arriving at the final version seen at the Licensing Expo in Las Vegas.

“Yes, there were a few iterations,” Sandberg said. “And you sort of have to keep changing stuff even after we started shooting because you realize things… You shoot the first scene and Zach (Levi) is like, ‘You know, I can’t move my hands properly with these gauntlets.’ So, we had to redesign that, or like the boots kept falling apart so it’s like, ‘Oh well, I guess we have to do something different there,’ It was sort of a constant process of updating and making it work better.”

And those updates and process of deciding what works versus what doesn’t extended to the look of the costume as well, not just its functionality. Sandberg explained that they did extensive work to make sure the fabrics and patterns worked well under the various lights used in filmmaking.

“You shoot the fabric [with] different lights,” he said. “Before you even have a costume, you test fabric samples with different patterns on them and all that. His lightning bolt lights up, so there was a lot of test to get that right.”

These details about the construction and evolution of the Shazam costume is the latest peek behind the veil, as it were, about what went into the making of Shazam! Sandberg shared various humorous updates all throughout the process, but also let fans in on the details of things as well. In addition to this latest about the costume, when the movie’s official logo was revealed back in March, Sandberg took to social media to share that the unofficial logo he had made to use in presentations had an influence on the film’s real, official logo.

“Months ago, I made a logo myself in Blender to use for presentations and stuff,” he wrote. “They wound up basing the official logo on that. I guess my presentation made quite an impression. I had no idea my twitter banner would end up a spoiler.”

Shazam! is slated to hit theaters on April 5, 2019. Other upcoming DC films are Aquaman on December 21, 2018 and Wonder Woman 2 on November 1, 2019.