The Rock Personally Called Warner Bros. And Told Them To Leave Black Adam Out Of The First ‘Shazam!’ Movie

As Black Adam finally nears its release date, The Rock is opening up about his, well, not quite superheroic yet not quite supervillainous turn. Announced all the way back in 2014, alongside the casting of Zachary Levi as Shazam, Black Adam has clearly spent numerous years in development hell. There were legitimate doubts that the movie would ever seen the light of day However, during that time, The Rock apparently kept very a watchful eye on the DC Comics character and even went so far as to stop Warner Bros. from using Black Adam too soon.

According to The Rock, Black Adam almost made his debut in the first Shazam! movie, which would’ve made sense given the two characters are arch-rivals going all the way back to the 1940s. There was just one small problem: The Rock wasn’t feeling it.

Via Vanity Fair:

“When the first draft of the movie came to us, it was a combination of Black Adam and Shazam: Two origin stories in one movie,” Johnson recalls. “Now 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 would be doing Black Adam an incredible disservice.’ It would’ve been fine for Shazam having two origin stories converge in one movie, but not good for Black Adam.”

As Johnson explains, he personally called up Warner Bros. and told them that Black Adam deserves his own movie. “I said, ‘I have to share my thoughts here. It’s very unpopular…’ because everybody thought, ‘Hey, this script is great, let’s go make this movie.’ I said, ‘I really think that you should make Shazam!, make that movie on its own in the tone that you want. And I think we should separate this as well.'”

Obviously, it’s not hard to tell who won that argument: Black Adam, the solo movie demanded by The Rock, slams into theaters on October 21, 2022.