After becoming a hit with audiences and a box office success, fanboys and fangirls were thirsty for more of Shazam! with the titular wisecracking teen-who-turns-into-a-grown-adult superhero played Zachary Levi. Warner Bros recognized this and almost immediately set a sequel with screenwriter Henry Gayden and director David F. Sandberg returning. Levi took the virtual dais in the Hall of Heroes to give us some details about the forthcoming sequel — even though he couldn’t share much. In fact, he couldn’t share anything at all except for the new title: Fury of the Gods.
Levi was, at first, alone on screen, but one by one, cast members including Asher Angel, Meagan Good, Jack Dylan Grazer, Faithe Herman, Adam Brody, director David F. Sandberg and Sinbad (who many thought was in the first film) popped up on the screen to talk about how much they couldn’t talk about the movie except for the new title, which Herman “drew” on the poster.
Shazam! opened to the tune of $159.1 million around the world when it opened last year. The movie is based on the comics by Bill Parker and C.C. Beck’s comic and follows foster child Billy Batson (Angel), a teenage boy who gains the ability to transform into the titular adult superhero Shazam. Batson derives his heroic attributes by saying the phrase, “Shazam” which is an acronym of the ancient world Gods and historical figures Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles and Mercury.
Like many comic book movies, the first movie ended, leaving the door open for a sequel and an opportunity to expand the DC movie universe. After we saw Superman joining Billy’s foster brother Freddy (Grazer) for lunch at school, there was a post-credits sequence that introduced audiences to the villainous Mister Mind (voiced by Sandberg), an alien worm that is one of Shazam’s arch enemies in the comic books.