We Finally Have Shazam Fighting Black Adam, On Instagram

Attempting to figure out just why exactly Shazam! Fury of the Gods performed so poorly at the box office has taken a messy turn. This past week, my former Forbes colleague Scott Mendelson, now at The Wrap, posted a lengthy article expanding on The Rock’s meddling in the Shazam franchise as an attempt to elevate Black Adam and his newly created JSA.

While we knew that The Rock had no desire for Black Adam to face Shazam, his actual comic arch-rival, in favor of an eventual showdown with Superman, and that he turned down even a cameo role in Shazam, The Wrap reports that The Rock actively vetoed a post-credits scene in which Shazam is recruited by Hawkman into the JSA that was meant to go at the end of Black Adam, which was obviously replaced by the now infamous Cavill Superman cameo. And then he again vetoed members of the JSA showing up in a post-credits scene for Shazam! Fury of the Gods.

It’s not just that this happened, it’s that Shazam’s star, Zachary Levi, posted a screenshot of this story on Instagram with the caption “The truth will set you free,” dragging the feud into the public. While The Rock has not exactly come out of the whole Black Adam situation looking great, Zachary Levi is also somewhat known at this point for somewhat off-putting social media posts (about DC and other issues), so this is not entirely off-brand for him either.

So…is this anything? Well, it certainly shows what a mess the DCEU had become, and why a fresh start is needed. Though with Gunn determined to carry over at least some old DCEU roles and actors, it’s not confirmed this is a fully clean slate just yet. Gunn is a personal friend of Levi and has praised the new Shazam movie. Though with this performance it’s hard to imagine a third film will exist, and if Levi keeps the role, I would imagine it would need to be attached to other projects.

As for The Rock, I would argue that a Shazam-linking post-credits scene in either Black Adam or Fury of the Gods would have…done nothing to salvage either film. However, it’s easy to imagine that an actual Shazam versus Black Adam movie starring both Levi and The Rock acting out their comic rivalry probably would have done better than both Black Adam and Fury of the Gods combined. The Rock’s extremely misguided quest to elevate Black Adam to some sort of equivalent status with Superman and actively rejecting any and all connection to Shazam despite their comic history and the two of them wearing the same symbol on their chest remains one of the strangest chapters of this DC saga, and that’s even with all the Zack Snyder stuff that ate up most of this period.

It is deeply unfortunate that the only way we are seeing this rivalry play out is…on Instagram. I kind of doubt The Rock will hit back, as he’s now buried in promotion for the XFL and seems content to pretend like Black Adam didn’t fail and was killed by the new DC regime. But if he does, I’ll update this post and we can see if Zach Levi gets called a “candy ass” or something.

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