Shazam! Director Reveals Original Cut Superman Cameo

During a Q&A with fans on Instagram stories, Shazam! director David F. Sandberg once again articulated what his original plans for Superman’s cameo in the film would have been. Apparently scrubbed when Henry Cavill’s schedule did not sync up with the filming schedule for Shazam! in Toronto, the Superman cameo as originally envisioned would have featured Cavill in all his splendor — so, y’know…you would have seen his face — and would have had a very slightly different ending to the scene and thus the film. Ultimately, though, Sandberg has said that the ending as it stands is probably better than what they would have had without the limitations of time and scheduling.

You can see the video of his answer to a fan question — captured by a Twitter user and posted to his account — below. Sandberg is currently in early development on a second Shazam! film, which will reportedly go into production in 2020.

This is more or less the same story that Sandberg told on the commentary track to the Shazam! DVD, in which he recalled that alternate final line, with Freddie preparing to launch into a quiz directed at Superman.

“In the script, we had a little scene with Superman — but we only had a very narrow window to shoot this scene in the school, so we tried to make it work with Henry Cavill but schedules did not align,” Sandberg admitted in the commentary. “I was like, ‘what do we do now? We need an ending to our movie,’ So we actually shot al little alternative ending in case we were going to use that where the kids see a hostage situation on TV and they just go out and fly off to deal with that, but it was like, ‘we don’t get the payoff with Shazam’s going to show up at school.’ So we did this thing with our Shazam stunt double in a Superman suit and we just cut out before you see his head. And it worked really well. I thought it was really funny. At first I was like, ‘This is never going to work, this is going to feel cheap,’ but cutting out on Freddy’s reaction like that, I think is better than what we had originally planned. Originally Superman is supposed to sit down, talk to the kids, Freddy was going to be like ‘I have so many questions,’ and then we were going to cut out, but this sudden cut to the credits just works so much better.”