It’s no secret that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has been fighting for years to make a Black Adam movie. He’s been very vocal about the journey and was emotional during the San Diego Comic-Con panel as he celebrated the upcoming release with 6,000+ fans.
Black Adam has been a decade in the making, and now we’re just t-minus two months away from the official release. And two months after that, we’ll see the second installment of the Shazam! franchise. Apparently, the original script for Black Adam included both of these characters.
But that is not how the Rock wanted it, as he recently told Vanity Fair. And what The Rock wants, The Rock gets.
How The Rock fought for Black Adam’s solo movie
In the comic books, Black Adam and Shazam are enemies who got their powers from the same wizard. Putting these two characters in one movie makes a lot of sense, but that is not the vision The Rock had.
“When the first draft of the movie came to us, it was a combination of Black Adam and Shazam: Two origin stories in one movie,” Johnson shared. “Now that was the goal — so it wasn’t a complete surprise. But when I read that, I just knew in my gut, ‘We can’t make this movie like this. We would be doing Black Adam an incredible disservice.’ It would’ve been fine for Shazam having two origin stories converge in one movie, but not good for Black Adam.”
Johnson called Warner Bros. and explained how he didn’t vibe with the idea of Shazam and Black Adam doing a movie together, at least not yet. It would be better, he thought, if each character got their solo movie, so if in the future there was a showdown, each of them got a chance to shine on their own first. “I said, ‘I have to share my thoughts here. It’s very unpopular’ because everybody thought, ‘Hey, this script is great, let’s go make this movie.’ I said, ‘I really think that you should make ‘Shazam!,’ make that movie on its own in the tone that you want. And I think we should separate this as well.’”
The Rock’s wish is Warner Bros.’s command. Black Adam hits theaters on October 21.
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h/t Indie Wire