Director David F. Sandberg has been providing fans with steady updates of his progress on the upcoming Shazam! movie, tossing in a few jokes here and there. Now we know when he’ll be diving into the film’s pre-production thanks to a recent interview.
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Sandberg was speaking with Collider about the release of Annabelle: Creation during which he revealed when he’s starting work on Shazam!
“Pretty much going into Shazam right away,” Sandberg said. “I mean my life’s just become so weird because I got to do Lights Out and immediately afterward I got to do Annabelle and now I’m going straight into Shazam, so it’s like I’m on a roll so let’s just keep going until they kick me out of Hollywood.”
Since he’s not taking any time off, it seems like filming could be imminent on the Shazam! movie… but Sandberg wouldn’t say.
He said he didn’t know if the dates were official yet, but teased that “it’s coming up.”
Sandberg is making the fourth film in what’s become The Conjuring shared universe, with more spinoffs and main entries on the way. He’s also working with Aquaman director James Wan, who helmed the first two Conjuring movies, but he’s yet to speak to him about their DC Films gigs.
“No, I actually haven’t talked to him since I got the job to do Shazam. Cause he’s in Australia shooting Aquaman and all that,” Sandberg said.
Speaking about why Warner Bros. turned to him and Wan for superhero movies when they’re known for horror films, Sandberg said it likely has to do with the difficulty in making a scary movie.
“I think horror… There’s sort of a trend almost of giving these bigger movies to horror directors and I think that horror is quite a hard genre to master so I think if you can do horror you can pretty much take on a lot of other things. It’s technically challenging to get right,” Sandberg said.
Annabelle: Creation is now playing.
Shazam! was originally announced to be released April 5, 2019, but it’s unclear at this point if the film will stick to that date.
