Shazam! 2: Zachary Levi Reveals His Hopes for the Sequel

05/08/2020 04:58 pm EDT

Shazam! star Zachary Levi is "super stoked" for the sequel and hopes the follow-up outdoes the original movie that pit the teen turned superhero (Asher Angel and Levi) against evil forces unleashed by Dr. Sivana (Mark Strong). The sequel, from returning director David F. Sandberg, re-teams Billy Batson with his foster family — Freddy (Jack Dylan Grazer), Eugene (Ian Chen), Pedro (Jovan Armand), Darla (Faithe Herman) and Mary (Grace Fulton) — who were granted the same superpowers first entrusted to Billy by an ancient wizard (Djimon Hounsou), transforming them into the adult-sized Shazamily (Adam Brody, Ross Butler, D.J. Cotrona, Meagan Good, and Michelle Borth).

"The truth is, I don't know much because they're still working on the script," Levi said when asked about Shazam! 2 during a virtual appearance at Awesome-Con Online 2020. "I know some general stuff and I'm super stoked about all of the general stuff that I've heard. But ultimately what I want, I want the movie to be better than what we gave people the first time, which I think was a really good movie."

Shazam! holds a 90% approval from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, making it the second-best received film from Warner Bros.' DC Extended Universe behind only the Patty Jenkins-directed Wonder Woman (93%). Both films are the only DCEU entries to score above 80%.

"Are there flaws in it? Are there other ways it could have been better polished or whatever? Sure," Levi said. "Most movies have bits and pieces about them that don't, unfortunately, get fully cooked or fully polished based on the pipeline of making movies and all that. But all in all, we made a really good movie, a solid movie that still remained in the 90 percentile on Rotten Tomatoes and still made so many people really happy and brought people a lot of joy, and that was awesome. So if we can just do at least that, I'm gonna be stoked. And if we can do more than that, that's what I'm hoping. I want to bring all that same joy and polish and fix and do whatever we can to the other structures of things that can make that tighter."

Ending the first Shazam! with the reveal of the Shazamily was a "great idea," Levi added, noting one of the bigger themes from the DC Comics movie — often described as Big meets Superman — is childhood wish fulfillment.

"It's about a lot of things, but one of the biggest things is childhood wish fulfillment. And wish fulfillment for any of us who have ever dreamed when we were kids of being a superhero," Levi said. "So to be able to give the audience that really cool payoff where it's not just the one kid, but all these kids get to see themselves as superheroes on screen. And the fact that we got such an incredible opportunity to have such a diverse rainbow of cast, of not just ethnicities but also one of the kids is disabled, in Freddy, and all of them are foster kids, and we got to tell that story."

Sandberg previously hinted at a bigger role for the Shazamily in Shazam! 2, now scheduled to open November 4, 2022.

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