Dwayne Johnson made sure Shazam and Black Adam remained separate movies

Black Adam has been a long time coming; In fact, it’s taken so long to get Black Adam off the ground that two Shazam movies have been produced in that same time. If you’ve got a long memory, you’ll know that Shazam and Black Adam were originally going to share one movie, but it seems that Dwayne Johnson was the one who decided to separate the two.

While speaking with ComicBook.com, Dwayne Johnson explained why he felt Shazam and Black Adam should be given their own movies.

The original plan, maybe five or six years ago I think, was to tell the two origin stories of Shazam! and Black Adam in the same movie. That’s what we had worked on. The script was delivered. When we all read the script, I immediately felt like, ‘We have to separate these two movies. We have to honor Shazam! and that origin story and what that is and what that can be for the fans and then we also have to tell our story, too, as well.’ I think in separating them, with the majority of the world not knowing who Black Adam if you weren’t a serious comic book fan, it was important I think to separate them and tell each story respectively.

Black Adam producer Beau Flynn said that he got a call from Dwayne Johnson very early in the morning, who said that they were going to make Black Adam its own thing. “Dwayne’s instincts are so extraordinary but he was right,” Flynn said. “Again, we were deep in it and developing that script with both of them and there’s a reason why sometimes in our business sometimes you have to keep moving forward and sometimes the business tells you. We weren’t really cracking it. It wasn’t really working and then that’s when that call came through and everything changed.“

It’s only a matter of time before Shazam and Black Adam do face off on the big screen, but Dwayne Johnson has previously teased that we shouldn’t expect it right away. “Without giving too much away, it’s not in the plans right now,” Johnson said in 2019. “I think the approach that we’re taking I feel really good about, and all of the filmmakers do too as well. It’s an origin story and that’s where we start it and we root it, and then we build out from there. Now, not to say Shazam isn’t on my radar. Of course Shazam is, but so is all of DC.“

Zachary Levi starred in the first Shazam movie, which came out in 2019, and reprised the role for Shazam: Fury of the Gods. The sequel will be hitting theaters on December 21, 2022, just a few months after Black Adam‘s October 21, 2022 release.