Shazam! may not have come anywhere near to matching Aquaman’s $1.15 billion box office total, but the David F. Sanberg-directed comic book movie nonetheless managed to earn a respectable $364.3 million worldwide on a $100 million budget, as well as becoming the best-reviewed entry in the entire DC Extended Universe to date.
The pic finally hits home video this week, with star Zachary Levi getting back on the interview circuit to promote the Blu-Ray release as well as offering updates on the status of a second installment:
“I know that I’m gonna have a conversation with my bosses pretty soon about what the idea is and where we’re going with the new movie, but all I really know is that New Line, our studio, and Warner Brothers, our parent studio, and DC, and our producers and executives and everybody who’s involved in all of the decision making, they’re all very happy with what we did. They want to do even better the second time around, and they are crafting a story right now as we speak about what that sequel is going to be.”
As is the case with any franchise built around a cast of young actors, Levi also realizes the importance of getting the Shazam! sequel in front of cameras sooner rather than later:
“The only other thing I know is they want to make it as soon as possible because those kids are growing up like weeds, so if we don’t do that in like the next two days, they’re gonna be full grown adults. We did principal photography, meaning the bulk of the filming on Shazam!, we did that over the course of four months or so in Toronto, Canada. Then we had about a six-month break, we came back to do additional photography.
In the six months from when we stopped principal photography to when we started additional photography, they quite literally grew so much that they couldn’t match their faces with what they looked like six months prior. So if we don’t shoot another movie real quick, then they’re just gonna be men. There’s no point in saying ‘Shazam’ to transform, they’re already transformed! So that’s all I can tell you about the sequel, but I’m very excited to get into it, making it, and I hope you all enjoy it when we do.”
No release date has been set yet for the Shazam! sequel, but we do know that it won’t feature Dwayne Johnson’s Black Adam quite yet. Levi clearly loves the character though, and has also shown his eagerness to team up with DC’s other cinematic heroes at some point in the future. Time will tell whether that’ll happen, but for now, you can take home Sandberg’s pic and watch it as many times as you’d like, as it’s currently available on Blu-ray.
