Shazam! Fury of the Gods Makes Fun of Fast & Furious in New Footage
New footage of Shazam! Fury of the Gods screened at CinemaCon involves a joke made at the expense of the Fast & Furious movies. Warner Bros. Pictures has a major presence at CinemaCon, where The Batman 2 was officially announced and an official logo for Blue Beetle was unveiled. Next up on the schedule was Shazam! Fury of the Gods, the sequel to 2019's Shazam!. A short clip was shown to those in the audience that featured Billy Batson dreaming of Wonder Woman while also poking fun at Fast & Furious. Not related, but Fast X, the 10th film in the franchise, lost its director earlier tonight when Justin Lin announced he was stepping down from the project.
The Shazam! footage showed the hero in Paris on a date with Wonder Woman, who we see from behind. The choice of camera angle is on purpose since Gal Gadot isn't playing the hero, similar to Wonder Woman's appearance in the Season 1 finale of HBO Max's Peacemaker. When Billy goes in to kiss Wonder Woman it's revealed she's really the Wizard. Later, Billy is with Helen Mirren's character and he tells her that he's seen all of the Fast & Furious movies. He comments that saving the world is all about family, a mantra from the franchise coined by Vin Diesel's Dom Toretto. The Shazam Family then shows up, who we also see fighting a huge dragon with glowing blue eyes.
More information revealed includes Helen Mirren and Lucy Liu being the daughters of Atlas, and the barrier between worlds is in danger of breaking.
"Yeah, I would say they've been doing this whole superhero thing for a while now. And you know last time everybody saw Billy he was a kid," star Asher Angel, who plays the younger version of Shazam, said at CinemaCon. "And these last couple years he's grown up a lot. He's matured and he's been able to balance himself pretty well. But I would say that adulthood is on the horizon for him and that's kind of a scary thing because he doesn't know what's gonna happen when he's 18 years old. He doesn't know if he's gonna have to leave the foster family or go somewhere else. He really doesn't know what's gonna happen. so I would say that weighs pretty heavily on him and he's just kind of trying to enjoy the moment and be with his family, be with his loved ones and hey, have these superpowers because it's always he's ever wanted and more."
Jack Dylan Grazer, who plays Freddie Freeman, said Freddie is "still adjusting [to having powers], to Freddie still super excited about his powers. He's still all over the place and ticks all time."
"Yeah, I mean, I think that we don't want to severe from the magic that we were able to find in the first movie. And that was balancing a lot of different genres, you know, the action and the comedy and the drama and the heart," adult Shazm star Zachary Levi added. "There's so much heart in the movie. And I think that's a massive part of what so many people connected to in the first film, and they're going to be really looking forward to in the next film."
Directed by David F. Sandberg, Shazam! Fury of the Gods lands in theaters on December 16th.