‘Shazam!’ Director Says ‘Justice League’ Had Zero Influence On The Film

In a recent interview, Shazam! director spoke about how his film is very different than Justice League.

Shazam! director Davids F. Sandberg recently spoke to our Executive Editor Nathaniel Brail about the next film of the DC Cinematic Universe. In the interview, Sandberg discussed about a lot of details in the movie like how he got to know the Shazam! character, the casting process for the movie, it’s setting and much more. One of the most interesting bits of it relates to how Shazam! and the Whedon/Snyder directed Justice League barely hold any similarities. According to Sandberg, the tone for his film will be a lot lighter than the one in Justice League or other movies in the DCU like Batman v. Superman for that matter:

I mean, it’s such a separate film that I don’t think it changed anything really. It’s very different from Justice League. It’s still the same universe, but just has a very different tone, and it’s not … yeah.

Sandberg also told us that the movie’s tone had nothing to do with all the criticism around Justice League, although we’re guessing that it had something to do with it. After Batman v. Superman and Suicide Squad, Warner Bros. and DC. moved away from Zack Snyder’s vision of these characters and chose to stand alongside the vision of the directors for each of the newest standalone movies like James Wan’s Aquaman or Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman. So it doesn’t come as a surprise that Sandberg was allowed to do the same.

Advertisement for the movie is already teasing that Billy Batson’s Shazam! wouldn’t really be a match for that dark tone, so we’re guessing that the movie is going in the direction of the latest DC movies to hit the theaters.

Do you think this lighter approach to the DC superheroes is a smart move for the DCU? Comment below!

Here’s the synopsis for Shazam!:

We all have a superhero inside us, it just takes a bit of magic to bring it out. In Billy Batson’s (Angel) case, by shouting out one word—SHAZAM!—this streetwise 14-year-old foster kid can turn into the adult Super Hero Shazam (Levi), courtesy of an ancient wizard. Still a kid at heart—inside a ripped, godlike body—Shazam revels in this adult version of himself by doing what any teen would do with superpowers: have fun with them! Can he fly? Does he have X-ray vision? Can he shoot lightning out of his hands? Can he skip his social studies test? Shazam sets out to test the limits of his abilities with the joyful recklessness of a child. But he’ll need to master these powers quickly in order to fight the deadly forces of evil controlled by Dr. Thaddeus Sivana (Strong).

Directed by David F. Sandberg, Shazam! stars Zachary Levi, Asher Angel, Mark Strong, Jack Dylan Grazer, Grace Fulton, Faithe Herman, Ian Chen, Jovan Armand, Cooper Andrews, Marta Milans, and Ron Cephas.

Shazam! will be released in theaters on April 5, 2019.