Originally published at: First look at The Rock as 'Black Adam' | Boing Boing
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So this is a spin-off of Shazam but doesn’t feature any of the primary characters from Shazam? Interesting choice, I guess.
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OK, so I read that title as “The Rock as Blackadder”…
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DC/Warner announced a slew of stuff
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That seems to be a weirdly common strategy - e.g. Sony’s “Spider-Man movies that don’t have Spider-Man in them.” I guess it’s working for them?
Although it probably wouldn’t be very good, that would almost certainly be more interesting than what it is.
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Black Adam was alluded to in the Shazam movie, he’s similar to Dr Doom in the sense that he flirts with both villainy and heroism. To me it makes sense to introduce the character in his own movie and then follow it up with both characters in another one, i’m not particularly excited about this though… Dwayne Johnson is charismatic but he’s been in a lot of terrible movies.
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I never had any interest in watching the Venom movies but I get why Sony went that route: they still had the film rights to the Venom character but had ceded the rights to Spider-Man back to Marvel Studios. That doesn’t seem to be the case here.
Maybe DC just decided that the “Big, but with superpowers” bit wouldn’t work now that Asher Angel is almost old enough to buy alcohol for real.
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I don’t think they did - the Spider-Man movies are Sony. My understanding is Sony has the rights, but they’ve been doing joint productions with Marvel for certain benefits (i.e. the Marvel cross-overs). Perhaps that deal has put limits on what other characters can be in Spider-Man movies (Marvel not wanting the spin-off characters to be in their universe, which by the transitive property they would be, if Spider-Man showed up in the spin-offs).
They’re doing a Shazam sequel, so it’s not like they’ve given up on that. Though it’s strange they weren’t lined up ready to make more while the actors were still young - seems like they missed some opportunities there, and also it seems like the Black Adam movie, if anything, delayed the Shazam sequel(s), making that situation worse.
I think part of it is that DC still doesn’t know what they’re doing with their movies. Marvel had a pretty fixed plan pretty early on, and they’ve been executing on that, whereas DC seems to have given up on the idea of a “cinematic universe” and is more, “well, which movies worked and which ones didn’t? Let’s try something else.”
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Shazam has been my favorite DC movie by far, so far - indeed one of only two that I’ve liked - so I’m 100% down for this, if it maintains the same vibe.
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Would watch.
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Couldn’t we take a few step back here.
From “that’s good for what it is” to, “wow, great movie.”
I’m thinking of “Parasite” but I could just as easily be thinking of “The Conversation”.
Pierce Brosnan, Aldis Hodge, and Quintessa Swindell all look fantastic in their hero roles, but I can’t tell you who these heroes are.
Based on the scene, I would think Marilyn and Charles “C.C.” Batson, Billy Batson (i.e., Shazam / Captain Marvel)'s parents, and Saied, a liaison with the Egyptian government for an archeological dig. In the comics, or at least in “The Power of SHAZAM!,” the parents and Saied were murdered by Adam, who was actually Teth-Adam, the second Shazam, reincarnated and … yeah, I can see why they might just cut all that down to “they broke the seal and Black Adam murdered everyone there.”
I think that the titular Black Adam is basically bad Shazam,
Sort of? The best versions have him as very well intentioned, and overly protective of his people, but also very ruthless and willing to kill those that oppose him without hesitation. His methods are somewhat evil, but his motives are much less so – a noble character in the original sense of the term.
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The Shazam sequel is underway, in the link I provided earlier in the thread had some early look pics
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I guess it’s fitting that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s very first role in a feature film was also as an ancient warlord who achieved mighty feats via powers borrowed from the Gods of Egypt.
Thank Anubis that CGI effects have improved since then.
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Essentially the way it works is Sony still owns the rights to Spider-Man. But they hire Marvel to produce Spider-Man movies for them.
Until their recent spat and renegotiation, the way it worked was Marvel was paid a flat amount of money and Sony kept the proceeds of the stand alone Spider-Man films. Marvel also got rights to feature Spiderman in a fixed number of non-Sony films. And Sony waved the right to use Spider-Man, at least Peter Parker, directly in any films outside the deal.
There doesn’t seem to be much reporting on how that changed after Sony tried to play hardball when that contract was complete. But it seems to be roughly the same, with some tweaks.
They do retain the rights to the whole Spider-Man shebang though, so they can use any other character outside of Marvel produced material. They just can’t directly tie anything to the MCU or Spider-Man films taking place there.
I think Marvel still controls the rights for television, but Sony has film and video games.
That I’m not entirely sure on. Black Adam was green lit way before Shazam. Mostly on the strength of Johnson signing on and pushing it, and it seemed to get delayed when the whole Murderverse thing started it’s slow motion collapse.
It only moved into production proper after Shazam! was well received and made some money. Shazam! only came out in 2019. It’s a little difficult to say sequels were delayed given the sequel they’re shooting is meant to come out in April. Any delays are more down to it’s entire production process taking place during the Pandemic.
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I lost interest in Shazam! when a bus crashed into Shazam’s hands after falling a good 15-20 meters and that was somehow better than just crashing into the ground…
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If it was Superman, I would’ve had a problem with that scene. But since Shazam’s powers are literally magic, I had no issue with it. At least that’s how I rationalized it. 
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Shazam was pretty good
It didn’t take itself too seriously
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For me Shazam was just ok. Not great, just ok. Plot-wise it was very safe, visually it was very obvious that they were always on a set with green screen, and i had more issues but at the end of the day i give it a pass because it was light hearted and fun
The story was almost word-for-word from the comic books, with the one change that they swapped in Dr Sivana for Black Adam
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