‘Shazam! Fury of the Gods’ reviews being perfectly acceptable and no more doesn’t bode well for the future

While there hasn’t been an overt confirmation or denial just yet, you’ve got to imagine that how Shazam! Fury of the Gods performs at the box office will go a long way to determining whether or not the title hero will live to fight another day in James Gunn’s DCU.

The sequel may be tracking for one of the franchise’s weakest box office runs yet, but given that it cost half as much as Black Adam to make, then the margins between success and failure are a lot smaller. Movies that don’t make money generally don’t get to spawn additional installments, so there’s reason to be concerned after the first wave of reviews dropped.

Fury of the Gods may not be getting widely panned, but the consensus being formed indicates that it’s a perfectly acceptable and fitfully entertaining comic book caper. Of course, not every spandex-clad epic needs to reinvent the wheel or change the game, but when the future is riding on how David F. Sandberg’s second chapter fares, “okay” may not be enough to save the day.

Should Fury of the Gods come close to matching the $366 million haul of its predecessor, then there’s no reason why Gunn and fellow co-CEO Peter Safran wouldn’t give the green light for a threequel. After all, the DCU has been ongoing for a decade already, and there’s definitely an argument to be made for at least a handful of legacy characters to be kept on.

We know that Henry Cavill’s Superman, Dwayne Johnson’s Black Adam, and Ben Affleck’s Batman won’t be among them, while the futures of Jason Momoa’s Aquaman and Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman remain entirely up in the air, so the door is technically open for Levi to sneak through should Fury of the Gods dispel the downbeat projections and find itself making some bank.