Warner Bros. didn’t have many live-action DC projects to show off at Comic-Con last weekend, but at least fans finally got to see new footage from Shazam! Fury of the Gods. The movie’s first teaser trailer offered an early glimpse at Billy Batson’s upcoming fight against the daughters of Atlas led by Hespera (Helen Mirren) and Kalypso (Lucy Liu). But it also gave us a new look at scenes featuring the Shazam “family” comprised of grown-up superpowered versions of Billy’s foster siblings. Now, director David F. Sandberg is sharing new details about their role in the highly-anticipated sequel.
The Shazam family’s appearance was easily one of the most thrilling parts of the film’s trailer. And while chatting with Collider after the sequel’s Hall H panel, Sandberg shared more about the conflict they’ll have with Zachary Levi’s titular hero. Unfortunately, not all of the family’s members are eager to work as a group. That’s will Billy is going to have to step up and show them the value of teamwork.
“In the movie, Shazam, he’s trying to keep the family together,” explained Sandberg. “But everyone’s doing their own thing. They haven’t really learned how to work together and especially Freddy [Freeman, played by Jack Dylan Grazer]. He just wants… ‘Yeah, I’m going to be a superhero on my own. Why do we have to do everything together?’ The movie is about them having to learn to work together and be a superhero team.”
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Excluding certain VFX shots that need to be cleaned up, Sandberg confirmed that the sequel’s final cut is essentially locked. But before this, Sandberg and Warner Bros. screened the movie for test audiences, and it sounds like these viewers demanded more scenes featuring Shazam’s allies.
“It was mostly actually tightening up in some places,” revealed Sandberg. “There’s a lot of stuff going on with monsters and everything. We had some sequences that were really cool that had a lot of monsters, but it didn’t really involve the family. It felt like, well, you can probably take that out because people want to see more of Shazam and the family, even though the monster’s just creating havoc and cities are cool too.”
Shazam! Fury of the Gods will hit theaters on December 21.
Are you excited to see more scenes featuring the Shazam family in the sequel? Let us know in the comment section below!
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