Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has for many years now been a fan favorite to play many comic book movie roles and that dream was finally realized when it was revealed that he would be playing Black Adam in the upcoming Shazam movie. Last year, we learned that Shazam was on the upcoming lineup for DC with a scheduled release date of 2019, but Johnson himself is now saying that it may be coming even sooner.
Shazam was one of the furthest out in the slate of movies announced by DC, but it was always odd that the villain/anti-hero role of Black Adam had already been cast. Johnson has already said before that he thought Shazam would be moved up and continued to say that while promoting his new movie San Andreas, where he mentions how he’s already been waiting to play Black Adam for eight years.
“No, I don’t think it’s going to be that far away. I think it’s going to be earlier than that. I don’t think 2019.”
It is impossible to know if he is just speculating or if he’s heard something from the higher ups at some point, but he definitely is excited about the movie. Having a star like Johnson out there to push the film might give enough reason to push it up earlier, but we’ll have to see.
Unlike the rest of the announced movies in the DC Cinematic Universe, Shazam is supposed to be produced by New Line Cinema, though still distributed by Warner Bros. There has even been some speculation that this movie wouldn’t be connected directly to the rest of the DC Cinematic Universe, but we really do not know if that will be the case. Either way, it would be great to see this movie sooner than the scheduled 2019 release date, especially considering the first rumors were that it would be coming next year.
