A certain type of wizardry and magic is required for a superhero movie to take off with audiences, and initial success also doesn’t transfer to subsequent projects in the franchise. This is exactly what DC Studios ran face-first into with their Shazam! franchise, but Zachary Levi, the actor who portrays the mythical hero for the now-defunct DCEU, doesn’t understand the criticism.
The original film debuted in April 2019, and to great fanfare once it was realized just how magnetic Shazam was in the movie, Levi perfectly delivered the origin story of a young boy who was granted the powers of a god, all while still trying to navigate the struggles of prepubescence while living in a foster home — all while Dr. Thaddeus Sivana (Mark Strong) and the Seven Deadly Sins seek to destroy him and steal his power for Sivana.
Shazam! was as lighthearted as it was packed with action, skyrocketing to $368 million in global box office earnings, but the follow-up, Shazam! Fury of the Gods fell flat against its predecessor and when compared to its budget. The sequel earned just $134 million worldwide on a budget of $125 million, garnering just nine million dollars for DC Studios and, ultimately, helped lead to the downfall of the already struggling DCEU; but Levi is defending the film, and passionately, to this very day, though in his usual wholesome fashion that is ironically right on brand for the character he portrayed.
“The audience score is still quite good, but the critics’ score was, I don’t know, very oddly and perplexingly low, and people were insanely unkind. Listen, I’ve been a part of things and as much as I wish that they were good, I know that they’re OK, I know they missed a lot. I’m not saying Shazam! Fury of the Gods is some perfect Orson Welles masterpiece, but it’s a good darn movie.”
Shazam Shrunk Back Down to Size
Shazam movie stillImage via Warner Bros Pictures
With James Gunn now at the helm of DC Studios and his reset for the DCU off to a roaring start thanks to 2025’s Superman starring David Corenswet, with Supergirl already in production (Gunn declaring Milli Alcock as his best casting ever), there doesn’t seem to be a space, at least not at the moment, for the continuation of Shazam! in the foreseeable future — a reality even Levi himself has mostly come to accept.
“I don’t know what the future holds, because Fury of the Gods was not well received. I have no idea where we go from here.”
All things considered, audiences loved Levi in the role of Shazam, but the storyline for Shazam! Fury of the Gods was muddy and disjointed. Even with star power that included Lucy Liu, Hellen Mirren, Djimon Hounsou reprising his role as the Shazam the Wizard and a cameo by Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman, audiences never connected with the film in the same way they had in the original film. And as the remainder of the DCEU looks dead in the water, it seems like a tall task to consider Gunn would cherry-pick Levi’s Shazam as one he’d like to move forward with, though he did it with Peacemaker, so never say never for the boy that became a god with a single word — hoping Gunn let’s him say it at least one more time.
Shazam! and Shazam! Fury of the Gods are both streaming on HBO Max.
Release Date
April 5, 2019
Runtime
132 minutes
Director
David F. Sandberg
Writers
Henry Gayden, C.C. Beck, Bill Parker, Darren Lemke
Producers
Peter Safran
