Dwayne Johnson Reveals He Wanted ‘Black Adam’ Separate from ‘Shazam!’

Dwayne Johnson has confused comic nerds after they suggested it would be wrong to include his DC character in the same movie alongside another hero… without getting his own movie first.

The rock revealed to Vanity Fair he lobbied WB a bit to make sure that ‘Black Adam’ would be its own standalone movie before any possible intermingling with ‘Shazam!’ would take place. — a separate character played by Zachary Levicwho Adam actually faces in the source material.

VF writes that Black Adam, played by Dwayne, is actually in the first ‘Shazam!’ movie in 2019, because he was initially written in the script as the big baddie opposite Levi.

However, The Rock says that when he saw this, when he was first approached about the project… he expressed his reservations, saying, “When the first draft of the film came to us, it was a combination of Black Adam and Shazam: Two origin stories in one movie.”

He adds: “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’d be doing Black Adam an unbelievable disservice. .’ It would have been good if Shazam had two origin stories coming together in one movie, but not good for Black Adam.” Dwayne called and got his way.

DJ doesn’t care why he thinks it would be a disservice… and that’s where the DC fandom starts. In their eyes it makes perfect sense to introduce Black Adam in a ‘Shazam!’ movie — even from the beginning — to see how BA is literally a known nemesis.

That’s not what the ‘Shazam!’ movies have done it so far… in both the OG/upcoming sequel there are other bad guys that Shazam is fighting, though Black Adam has been teased. Eventually they will intersect… but critics I find it odd that Dwayne insisted on having his outing to get things going. To be honest, some of us have a Carly Simon song on them.

The Argument… The Rock’s ego might show by admitting that he wanted the character to be bigger than WB might have initially intended – especially if he was going to play him.

In Dwayne’s defense… all he did was squeeze what he thought would be best, and Warner clearly thought that was the right way to see how they really turned and a whole ‘Black Adam’ movie made as DJ suggested, which is due out later this fall. Besides, it’s all headed for a big mashup anyway…so who cares?