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The Rock Black Adam Movie Will Come Before Shazam Movie Says Studio: Will He Fight Superman?

By Daniel Ketchum
Published on: 03:22 PST, Jan 22, 2017

As reported by ScreenRant, production on The Rock Black Adam movie apparently finally has a go from the studio. For several years now, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Warner Bros. studio have been teasing the production of a Shazam-based movie – apparently featuring The Rock in the role of the sometimes villain/sometimes antihero Black Adam. But getting this movie off the ground has been a difficult process.

But now, instead of a single Shazam movie – with The Rock playing the role of Black Adam and some unknown actor playing the role of Shazam – the studio has decided to first release the Black Adam movie and later release a second movie focusing on the character of Shazam. A recent meeting at the studio seems to indicate that a 2019 release date for the movie is probable.

The recent shakeup at Warner Bros. studios following the disappointing results from Batman v Superman may have led to the decision to accelerate the production of this movie property. Although The Rock was announced for the role years ago, for a long time it seemed to be stuck in production limbo.

The Character Being Played by The Rock

Black Adam and Shazam have quite a history. Years ago, the character now known as Shazam was owned by Marvel Comics and was instead known as Captain Marvel. Captain Marvel was one of the earliest superheroes in comic books, but copyright wrangling between Marvel Comics and DC Comics led to the character being handed over to DC because of its supposed similarity to Superman.

Interestingly, DC got the character but couldn’t use the name itself, so it renamed him Shazam, which was the word the character used to speak – and still does – to transform from Billy Batson to the superpowered Captain Marvel/Shazam.

While originally the character of Black Adam was irredeemably evil, in The Rock Black Adam movie, the studio may choose to adapt the more recent versions of the character in the comics in which he is more or less an antihero, committed to – rather violently – avenging wrongs and protecting the innocent.

One of the best reasons for this studio to introduce these two characters separately – rather than in the same movie – is that both would require their own separate origin story, with the Black Adam origin story taking place in ancient Egypt and the Shazam origin story happening in modern-day America. By separating them into two different movies, moviegoers only have to endure one origin story per film.

Superman Versus The Rock

With this recent announcement that the Black Adam movie would arrive in theaters before the Shazam movie itself, there have been hints by the studio – and by Dwayne Johnson and Henry Cavill – that Black Adam’s main adversary in his titular film would be Superman, rather than Shazam.

The Rock and Cavill – who plays Superman in the DC Cinematic Universe – recently released a photo of themselves sitting down and having a beer together, which couldn’t help but create a firestorm on the Internet and on Twitter. The implication that they would be doing a project together was fairly clear.

This epic confrontation between Superman and Black Adam has been shown many times in the comic books and in DC animated films, but this would be the first time for a live-action movie. It may be that DC and Warner Bros. feel this matchup between the characters of Superman and Black Adam would prove more interesting to viewers than the one between Superman and non-superpowered Batman, especially given that Black Adam has many of the same strengths and powers as Superman.

There have also been rumors that Black Adam may appear in the upcoming Aquaman film – although most likely in a cameo role designed to introduce the character. The first film to fully feature the character will be The Rock Black Adam movie itself. Then – presumably – he would also show up in the later Shazam film as that character’s principal opponent.

[Featured Image by Kevin Winter/Getty Images]

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