Ahead of the movie’s trailer debut at Comic Con International in San Diego later this week, Warner Bros. has released the first official publicity still of Asher Angel in the role of Billy Batson, the boy who cries “Shazam!” and transforms into the adult superhero of the same name.
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You can see the photo, which also features another shot of Jack Grazer’s Freddy Freeman, below. This shot appears to be taking place as Billy is getting settled into the foster home where he lives during the film — a setting similar to Geoff Johns’s run on Shazam! when it was a backup in Justice League. Freddy, meanwhile, has an impressive superhero collection filled with Easter eggs and nods to Superman, Batman, and more.
“Freddy’s a fanbody when it comes to Batman, Superman, the Justice League, so he becomes Billy’s mentor and sansei when it comes to being a superhero,” Grazer told EW, who debuted the image.
Shazam!, which will be set around the holidays, is heavily influenced by the New 52 revival of the character by DC’s former chief creative officer Geoff Johns, who left the company recently to start a production company.
One of his first post-DC deals? Signing an exclusive deal with Warner Bros. to provide DC-centric content, including a new Shazam! comic book series timed to coincide with the start of the film.
The movie has been described as “Big with superheroes,” which seems apt; in that film, a young boy makes a wish that he could be big, and it’s granted — with a twist: he wakes up the next day with his regular mind in an adult body.
There are different takes on Shazam!, with some writers treating the superhero (sometimes known as Captain Marvel — long story there) as a separate entity from Billy Batson while other writers imagine him as Billy’s mind in the superhero’s body. A happy medium some fans choose to interpret is that Shazam is Billy’s mind, but given the wisdom of Solomon (one of the hero’s powers), it changes his perspective somewhat and can sometimes make him seem to be a different person from his younger self.
The second of those three takes seems the most likely for a movie that closely identifies with Big, but fans will have almost a year to see what shape it will take.
Shazam! stars Levi, Mark Strong, Jack Dylan Grazer, Ron Cephas Jones, Grace Fulton, Asher Angel, Marta Milans, Cooper Andrews, Faithe Herman, Ian Chen, Caroline Palmer, and Andi Osho.
Justice League is now on home video. The DCEU continues with Aquaman on December 21, Shazam! on April 5, 2019, Wonder Woman 2 on November 1, 2019. Cyborg and Green Lantern Corps are still in development, along with numerous other films, but it is not yet clear what impact changes at DC management will have on their timetables for production and release.
