One of the most fascinating rumors to emerge in the wake of Black Adam yielding an embarrassingly swift DCU exile for Dwayne Johnson is that the short-lived superhero held a thinly-veiled distaste for Shazam!.
Even if we ignore that fact that the two all-powerful deities have been comic book archenemies for decades so the connection was there for all to see, Johnson additionally produced the opening installment through his Seven Bucks company, even if it instantly became obvious that the only reason he’d involved himself with the adventures of Billy Batson was so he could leverage Black Adam into a showdown with Henry Cavill’s Superman.
Suffice to say, that plan didn’t work out too well for the 50 year-old, and he’s now left on the outside looking in as the DCU continues on without him, all while Shazam! sequel Fury of the Gods gears up to hit theaters in just a couple of weeks. Reports also offered that the 50 year-old knocked back the chance to make a cameo appearance in Zachary Levi’s sophomore outing, so it certainly looks as though the Man in Black wasn’t interested in having anything to do with the candy-colored capers.
That hasn’t stopped fans from debating canonical inconsistencies, though, with a Reddit post gaining traction for pointing out that some of the events we saw either depicted or referenced in Shazam! should have been acknowledged or referenced in Black Adam. Of course, it’s an ultimately pointless debate given the lay of the land; Johnson is out on his ass, he couldn’t care less about his longtime nemesis in any way, shape, or form, and the first decade of the DCU has been largely defined by continuity battling against itself each and every time a new project emerges.
If The Rock wasn’t interested and wound up with nothing to show for it, then why should anyone else concern themselves with such trivialities?
