Shazam is following in Superman’s footsteps, as DC film star Zachary Levi is launching a rewatch podcast, in which he will take a retrospective look at Chuck, his cult-favorite NBC series that ended in 2012. In doing so, he joins not just Smallville stars Tom Welling and Michael Rosenbaum, but the stars of a number of high-profile TV shows from the recent past, from The Office and Scrubs to Psych and Boy Meets World. In addition to looking back at the making of the shows, these rewatch podcasts tend to create a ton of buzz around the properties, and a lot of news stories as never-before-heard stories come to the fore.
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The revelation that Levi is planning a rewatch podcast came about in a somewhat unexpected way: on Twitter, a user suggested the possibility that they might start a rewatch podcast, and invited Levi on to talk about the show. Levi countered that he was already on the case.
“I’m actually planning on hosting my own Chuck rewatch podcast, so I’ll be busy over there,” Levi replied.
The series, which also starred Yvonne Strahovsky and Matt Bomer, aired from 2007 until 2012, making Levi a familiar face to millions of Americans.
In the years since the show ended, Levi and his fellow cast members have frequently talked about returning to the world of Chuck in a follow-up movie. The series finale was controversial, and some fans have long hoped for a cleaner “happy ending” to Chuck and Sarah’s story. Levi has consistently said that he and Warner Bros. want to make a movie happen, and it’s just a question of getting things moving at the right time.
“Chuck fans are some of my favorite people in the world,” Levi told Sirius XM’s Jess Cagle in March. “They have buoyed my career so long and, and, and they continue to grow. I, I mean, we have been on every streaming platform at this point, and more and more people find it with each iteration, and, which is even more reason why I keep trying to make this darn Chuck movie. And I think I’ve convinced the people at Warner Bros. to let me do it at some point. I don’t know when this is. I mean, this is all still kind of nascent stages, but Yeah. But Chuck fans are delightful. and the Shazam fans are delightful too. But you do get a lot of people that are not, that are, that are more comic book fans than let’s say, even Zach fans or Shazam fans. And they’re, they can be very critical sometimes, you know, like all the Chuck fans are fans, because they like to show, but then there are some purists within the comic book worlds that are like, ‘well, you didn’t do the version of Shazam that I wanted you to do, so I don’t like what this…’ There’s only one version of Chuck.”
“I’ve been trying to make a Chuck movie since before we even finished the show,” Levi added. “I saw the writing on the wall, I saw a lot of the streaming stuff starting to pop up. I saw…Veronica Mars, it crowdfunded. So I was like, clearly there’s an appetite for people wanting to see additions to the series that they, you know, held dear in their heart. And our fans, Chucksters are, I almost use an expletive, our fans frigging fantastic people and die-hards. And I know that they’re there. I know that they would support it. It’s just a matter of figuring out how to slice it. Warner Bros. owns the rights to it. I’m in early talks with heads there to be like, ‘Hey guys, you know, I’m now your, your superhero over your Warner Bros. films. Let me let, let me use that goodwill and let me go make this.’ Cuz I think, uh, look, I know all the cast would be in, they’ve already said that totally down to do it. I think Josh Schwartz and Chris Fedak, our creators are down, they’re down to write it and you know, bring the band back together. It’s just a matter of Warner Bros. saying, ‘yeah, we’re down and here’s a budget and go make that movie.’ Cuz I listen, Chuck was basically a little mini eighties action movie every week anyway. So it’s not like we don’t know how to do it. We just have a little more budget in time and go make a proper movie. I think it would be so much fun.”
Right now, as SAG-AFTRA is on strike, things like rewatch podcasts are a bit of a gray area. Actors are being discouraged from doing anythign public-facing that can seem like promotion of struck work or studio projects, but retrospective things like this are not exactly advertising content that the studios are excited about. In some cases, things like podcasts and convention appearances not only don’t promote new content, but can provide actors with revenue that helps offset the loss of work and keeps the strike alive.
