The Shazam sequel is looking bigger and better than ever. The director, however, points out that it’s also not always the best thing to have things on a higher scale, as this is the reason he walked away from the idea of working on a Superman film.
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During an Instagram AMA (ask me anything), Sandberg revealed that he at one point really wanted to work on a Superman story but decided against it due to the large fanbase. “At one point I would have said Superman, but when there are so many different expectations and hardcore fans, you’re going to piss off so many people no matter what you do,” he said. “Seeing how people react to things like The Last Jedi makes me want to stay away from things like that.” For those who don’t know, a lot of the Star Wars fan base was incredibly rude to the cast and writers of the sequel trilogy, even going as far as to make some of them delete their social media.
The fan base for Shazam as a character is far and few between when compared to other heroes like Batman, Superman or Wonder Woman. This is mainly due to the treatment this character gets, as most of the DC storylines focus on only those three characters when DC should copy Marvel’s ability at giving the less popular characters their own platform. The Guardians of the Galaxy were relatively unknown before their own movie, and DC has plenty of characters that are still on the unknown level.
Most comic book fans know of Blue Beetle, Booster Gold, Atom, Red Arrow, Vixen, Hawkgirl and Star Sapphire. However, if one were to ask a random parent who these characters are, they would likely not get an answer. Everybody knows Batman, his villains, his plight, his origin, his world, etc. That character has a lot of depth because writers make it that way. This can easily happen for a lot more characters, which is a shame because Sandberg is a talented director and could’ve potentially done something unique with Superman, similar to what Zack Snyder did with Man of Steel.
Hopefully moving forward, there’s more of an understanding between fans and creatives. It seems that there’s a habit of fans being harsh and demanding more content at a faster rate while maintaining perfection. This happens in anime, gaming, music and of course superhero movies. It might take them seeing how hard it is to make these products to understand. Only time will tell.
Shazam! Fury of the Gods is coming to theaters on December 16th, 2022.
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Source: David F. Sandberg
