Dwayne Johnson Says His Black Adam Will Be A Modern Day Dirty Harry

Dwayne Johnson has been all over red carpets and promotional events over the past couple weeks, heavily promoting his newest effort, Hobbs & Shaw, a spinoff of the popular Fast & Furious franchise, of which Johnson is a focal character. However, at each event talk turns to what’s next for the former WWE superstar.

In fact, there’s one project in particular that seems to be on everyone’s thoughts: DC’s Black Adam. For his part, Johnson has long been attached to the role of Shazam’s archenemy, but the development has been slow. Whether the fault lies with Warner Bros. and their continually shifting priorities regarding the DCEU or the team behind the production are just taking the time to get things perfect is anyone’s guess.

Even with all the struggles that Black Adam has endured thus far though, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, as it appears things are finally starting to come together. And during a recent press event, Johnson discussed the film’s forward momentum and teased the it’ll be something a little different from your average superhero movie:

So, it looks like we will be shooting Black Adam probably in the Summer of 2020. If everything goes right, if the script has come in, the script is great. We hired Jaume Collet-Serra as our director. He is a really terrific filmmaker who just directed myself and Emily Blunt in Jungle Cruise. I’ll share this one little tidbit with you, Jaume wants to create the Dirty Harry of superheroes.

Given that Johnson and anyone else associated with the film plays up the “anti-hero” aspect more than anything else, the correlation to Dirty Harry, a character from a series of movies in the 1970s, portrayed by the incomparable Clint Eastwood, who’s notorious from playing fast and loose with the rules, makes sense.

Whether it’s a good thing for Black Adam is up in the air, but DC is riding high of the successes of Aquaman and Shazam!, so here’s hoping this is another smart choice and we’ll be seeing The Rock raising eyebrows and asking punks if they feel lucky sooner rather than later.