Zachary Levi says both Shazam! movies' big cameos were "thwarted" by outside forces

Rumors continue to swirl this week about the role Black Adam's Dwayne Johnson may have played in stopping a Justice Society post-credit scene from being filmed

By William Hughes | March 25, 2023 | 1:49am

Aux News Zachary Levi

Zachary Levi says both Shazam! movies' big cameos were

Zachary Levi Photo: Jason Mendez

Let’s be clear: At no point, in his various recent social media comments about the treatment of his superhero movie Shazam!, and its sequel, the still-in-theaters Fury Of The Gods, does star Zachary Levi use the words “Dwayne,” “Rock,” or “Johnson.” Levi very pointedly doesn’t mention Black Adam star Dwayne Johnson even once, even as he repeatedly asserts—including while addressing his recent re-posting of an article that alleges that Johnson sabotaged a post-credits scene in Fury Of The Gods by banning Hawkman (Aldis Hodge) and Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell) from appearing in it—that he doesn’t “blame” anybody for the film’s lackluster box office performance. (Except lousy marketing.)

So “blaming” is out. But “thwarting”? Oh, Zachary Levi is very happy to talk about “thwarting.” Man’s gone thwart-mad, practically.

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This is per an Instagram video that Levi posted yesterday, in which he asserted that the Shazamily has been, yes, thwarted in its plans for big superhero cameos to end on now not just once, but twice. They were “thwarted,” he said, in the first film, which infamously ends with a “cameo” from Superman that stops firmly at the neck. Not the plan, Levi asserts, but efforts to bring Henry Cavill in to film the cameo were repeatedly “th”-worded. And then, wouldn’t you know it, they were thwarted again for Fury Of The Gods, reportedly just three days before the post-credits sequence was meant to be filmed, which means that Jennifer Holland and Steve Agee from Peacemaker had to fill in, instead.

Levi goes so far as to namecheck the people he doesn’t blame for these thwartings, including Holland’s husband, James Gunn, plus DC Films co-head Peter Safran, Shazam! director David F. Sandberg, and long-since-fired former DC Films head Walter Hamada. It’s actually not clear which powerful supervillain could be left to have done all these thwartings—although, weirdly enough, Levi doesn’t mention Dwayne Johnson even once in the video! “I’m merely coming to the defense of the truth,” Levi ends the video by saying. “Truth is good. We should all live in it.”