LATEST NEWS

Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson Will Play Black Adam in Shazam

by Alex Billington
November 2, 2007

In some interesting news coming from Hollywood today, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson will suit up and play the character Black Adam in the Shazam! movie. The movie was first announced back in March and it was almost ready for production until Johnson stepped and now they're rewriting the script. He's been in talks on the film for a while, but when he asked the fans at Comic-Con whether he should be Black Adam instead, they all agreed and then that buzz made it all the way to the studio. Now John August is rewriting it working in Black Adam alongside of Captain Marvel.

Filmmaker Peter Segal, of Anger Management, 50 First Dates, and Get Smart, will be directing and August will be writing, as previously mentioned. While promoting Southland Tales in Hollywood, Dwayne Johnson commented about his role as Black Adam in Shazam!

I just met with Pete Segal last night, we had a great meeting on Shazam!, and we’re just waiting for John August to hand in another draft. Which probably will be handed in months from now after the strike.

Johnson goes on to explain the story and how his character actually ended up being worked in.

They first approached me about playing Captain Marvel, and they also said 'and there's also this interesting character too called Black Adam.' I said oh, okay, great. And we went down to Comic-Con to show the trailer of Get Smart. Down there talking to all the fans they were like 'you should look into Black Adam.'

From there the buzz, which was overwhelming as MTV confirms, made it all the way back up to the studio. Now they're revising it and working on changing Black Adam's character to play off of the strengths (no pun intended) of "The Rock."

Black Adam is a fictional comic book character whose morally ambiguous nature has his character fall between the lines of heroism and villainy; as a result, he has associated himself with both superheroes and supervillains at different times.

Given that the Writers Guild is about to strike very, very soon, John August's script likely won't be turned in for quite a while, meaning this movie is on hold until then. This is one of the first victims of the Hollywood strikes.

Tweet Pin It

Related categories: Casting, Movie News