“Shazam” Is Dead, Screenwriter John August Says

By Andy Hunsaker, Fancast Movies

The success of The Dark Knight may have just cost WB another franchise superhero flick, as John August, who has been trying to get his varying scripts for the film off the ground for years now, has announced that the Shazam! project as he knows it is dead on his blog, with a detailed retelling of how the project changed and eventually was shot down.

Originally conceived as a more kid-friendly superhero movie, as is natural for the story of Captain Marvel, since he’s actually a young teenager named Billy Batson who can transform himself into a burly super man simply by shouting the magic word “Shazam!” It very obviously translates to a “Big with superheroes” high concept. There was even talk of The Rock starring as Black Adam, Captain Marvel’s enemy who would have been cast as a Voldemort type of dark foreboding presence while Billy struggled with his powers. Brandon Molale, pictured above, was angling for the role of Captain Marvel, and as you can see, the man’s a dead ringer, big eyebrows and mighty stature and all. The character has always skewed younger and more wholesome in the comics - in fact, Batson’s fictional home town of Fawcett City has often been depicted as a ‘gee whiz, aw shucks’ kind of throwback burg somewhere in the Midwest. August says this take on the material was well-received at New Line and seemed to be gearing up for production.

That is, until New Line folded, Speed Racer flopped and The Dark Knight blew everything away. This immediately made Warner Bros. look closely at the project and say ‘be more like Batman,’ even though the character is the polar opposite of Batman - bright, shiny, wholesome and optimistic to the point of naivete. So August obliged and rewrote the film into a dark, edgy thing that brought Black Adam to the fore (and things can get pretty dark if you think about what an evil Superman could do). Then, after a lot of mixed signals from the higher-ups, he’s now been informed that the project is a no-go.

It’s possible that WB is just scare of another Superman Returns, and they don’t want to take a risk on a Superman-type of character until they have a functioning Superman franchise again. Or they’re just blind enough not to realize that not every superhero movie needs to follow the same pattern. Comic books are rich and varied works, and one should think that The Dark Knight and Iron Man would have taught them that they don’t all have to fit one profile. They made Watchmen, for pete’s sake. Break the mold, man! Even if that means going back to what was good about the old mold!

Here’s a great clip from the Justice League Unlimited animated series depicting a fight between the titans of power, Captain Marvel vs. Superman.