THE DCEU has had a bumpy road over the past year, and all eyes were on the Warner Bros. panel at the San Diego Comic-Con over how the studio would deal with its upcoming releases. To no one’s surprise, the studio chose to focus on its two least controversial films – Shazam! Fury of the Gods and Black Adam – during its hour-long panel slot.
Onstage, Shazam! star Zachary Levi bantered with costars Lucy Liu, Asher Angel and Jack Dylan Grazer and director David F. Sandberg, while Helen Mirren and Rachel Zegler appeared in a scripted video message to celebrate their female co-stars.
Both Mirren and Liu will play the Daughters of Atlas, who appear to want to take back the “power of all the gods” that Shazam and his teenage buddies “stole” to become adult superheroes during the events of the previous film. The lighthearted, but action-packed sequel will premiere on Dec 21.
Watch the Shazam! Fury of the Gods trailer below:
Later, Dwayne Johnson made a memorable appearance in full costume as Black Adam, emerging on a raised platform surrounded in smoke and sending a bolt of lightning into the audience – activating blue lights in lanyards handed out to the Hall H audience.
He later shared the stage with co-stars Aldis Hodge, Noah Centineo and Quintessa Swindell to talk about how it had long been his dream to bring Black Adam to the big screen. He later debuted a brand new trailer for the film, which showcased more scenes of the characters using their powers, and announced that he was giving away free IMAX tickets to all 6,000 audience members in Hall H to watch the movie when it premieres on Oct 21.
When a fan asked him how Black Adam would fare against Superman in a fight, Johnson gave an eyebrow-raising reply: “It probably all depends on who’s playing Superman.”
Despite this name-drop, there was little evidence of any of the DCEU Justice League characters at the panel. The biggest DC movies for 2023, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom and The Flash, were completely absent from promotional materials at the event, probably due to the studio wanting to downplay the controversies associated with the film’s stars Amber Heard and Ezra Miller, respectively.
There was also no mention of other DC titles like Batgirl (expected to debut this year) and the recently-wrapped Blue Beetle (featuring the first Latino superhero character to appear in a comic book movie), nor updates on the future of Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman and Robert Pattinson’s The Batman.
While this downplaying has left some fans worried over the future of the DCEU, industry insiders have speculated that it could be Warner Bros. way of minimising any possible negative press, until it is ready to announce new developments to its future line-up of superhero films.
