Warning: This article contains spoilers for Black Adam.
After 15 years of being attached to the project, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is finally unleashing his Black Adam film to the world this week. But a question that has been plaguing many DC fans’ minds is: Will there eventually be a Black Adam vs. Superman movie at some point?
First, we must ask: Just who is the actor who is bringing Superman to life in the universe of DC films, anyway? Henry Cavill portrayed the role in Zack Snyder’s trio of DC films, beginning with 2013’s Man of Steel, but cameos by the Blue Boyscout where his face was obscured in some way — such as in Shazam! and Peacemaker — have cast doubt on The Witcher star’s future with the so-called DC Extended Universe in recent years.
However, a regime change at DC Films that coincided with a newly-minted CEO, David Zaslav, of the newly merged company — Warner Bros. Discovery — has brought some hope to the prospect of Cavill playing everyone’s favorite Kryptonian once again. Johnson himself has even been heavily teasing Superman’s full-blown return to the DCEU in recent weeks.
That Black Adam mid-credits scene
Just as Johnson has been teasing in recent weeks, sometimes in a giddy and tongue-in-cheek video update on Instagram amid his workout routine, Superman does indeed make an appearance in a Black Adam mid-credits scene. Specifically, it is Cavill’s Superman who emerges from the shadows and confronts Black Adam directly after the Man in Black receives a warning message from Viola Davis’ Amanda Waller who essentially threatens to kill Black Adam if he does not rein himself in. This confrontation would seem to set up Superman and Black Adam perhaps facing off in a future movie. However, it’s not necessarily a concrete lead-in to a full-blown Black Adam vs. Superman movie or anything like that. The two mighty figures do not come to blows in the scene. And don’t expect some kind of teaser trailer for a Black Adam vs. Superman movie after the credits have finished rolling because there isn’t one.
What Dwayne Johnson has said about a Black Adam vs. Superman movie
When Johnson was asked by Cinemablend a couple of weeks back whether he intends to make a movie at some point where Black Adam fights Superman, the wrestler-turned-actor said:
“Absolutely. That is the whole point of this man. Thank you for asking that. And I have been saying for some time, there’s a new era in the DC Universe that’s about to begin.”
In addition, Johnson has not shied away from explaining why he thinks Black Adam would be a formidable opponent against Superman. As Johnson explained in an interview back in August:
“When you pull Black Adam out of the pantheon of superheroes in the DC Universe, he is blessed with these incredible superpowers from the gods that rival Superman […] Superman’s greatest weakness is magic, and one of Black Adam’s greatest superpowers is magic.”
However, all of this hype surrounding a potential Black Adam vs. Superman movie may not be as cut-and-dry as it appears. Last week, Johnson had this to say about the prospect of an epic battle between the Man in Black and the Man of Steel in a movie:
“I don’t know. I don’t know. I think the question is, should it be the showdown? I don’t know if that’s the way to go […] We can’t go right there right away.”
Future Superman film projects in the works
What do we know about future Superman movies coming out of DC Films? Following the aforementioned regime change at the movie studio, Johnson finally got the green light to include Cavill’s Superman being included in Black Adam, with the aforementioned mid-credits scene being filmed a mere month before the movie’s release. The movie studio in general has now adopted “an intense desire to reprise the Cavill iteration of the hero,” according to The Hollywood Reporter. As the article explained, “The project that would essentially be Man of Steel 2 is being produced by Charles Roven and is currently searching for writers.”
Should DC take a lesson from its own movie history, jumping immediately into a Black Adam vs. Superman movie may not be the wisest decision, considering the critical disaster that was the 2016 film Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. The crossover movie ended up cramming way too many ideas into one story that resulted in a muddled mess of a film.
All of this would seem to point to a Man of Steel sequel — something that probably should’ve happened back in 2016 instead of BvS — being the next DC film we are likely to get with Smallville himself headlining the role. However, that doesn’t necessarily entirely rule out a Black Adam vs. Superman movie taking place at some point in the future; as Johnson has said, “That is the whole point of this.”
Let’s hope DC takes its time to flesh out its universe of films by having the various heroes get their own dedicated movies first before cramming them all into a crossover tentpole like they tried to do in the mid-2010s time and again. With that said, we certainly wouldn’t mind seeing Black Adam show up in 2023’s Shazam! Fury of the Gods, since both Shazam and Black Adam will have had their own solo films under their belts by then, and not to mention Black Adam is actually Shazam’s arch-nemesis in the comics.
If you want to take a glimpse into the DCEU’s future, check out Black Adam on Oct. 21.
