Zachary Levi wants the Shazam! sequel to start production right away
Zachary Levi, who played the adult superhero with supernatural powers, desires a sequel to Shazam as soon as possible.
Although the first ever live-action Shazam! film didn’t quite hit the big bucks Warner Bros. was expecting, it was a modest success, raking in $364.3 million at the worldwide box office on a roughly $100 million production budget. If you count all of costs, including marketing and advertising and excluding film’s distribution, the complete total would be approximately $200 million.
With Shazam! dropping on home video already earlier this week, actor Zachary Levi declared that he wants a sequel featuring the grown superhero of the same name as soon as possible. Via We Got This Covered, the actor who portrayed the adult half of the lead character spoke of his interest during Germany’s CCXP Cologne convention:
"“The only other thing I know is they want to make it as soon as possible because those kids are growing up like weeds, so if we don’t do that in like the next two days, they’re gonna be full grown adults. We did principal photography, meaning the bulk of the filming on Shazam! we did that over the course of four months or so in Toronto, Canada. Then we had about a six-month break, we came back to do additional photography.”“In the six-months from when we stopped principal photography to when we started additional photography, they quite literally grew so much that they couldn’t match their faces with what they looked liked six months prior. So if we don’t shoot another movie real quick, then they’re just gonna be men. There’s no point in saying ‘Shazam’ to transform, they’re already transformed! So that’s all I can tell you about the sequel, but I’m very excited to get into it, making it, and I hope you all enjoy it when we do.”"
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Levi’s comments are definitely understandable; aging an actor upwards is easier, practically during the filmmaking process, but aging downwards is a little tricky. Yes folks, you may be thinking why, “not use de-aging technology?” First of all, using that on child actors has never been attempted before, and the results can go either way. It could make them look bizarre or a bit too photorealistic, bordering on uncanny valley. Plus, the visual effects technique is very expensive to do frame-by-frame.
The same can be true for Asher Angel, who portrayed Billy Batson in the film. The young actor is currently 16 and, when principal photography on the movie commenced in January of last year, he was 15. Based on the current speed of production on the franchise, Angel will likely be a young adult by the time a hypothetical third Shazam! movie comes out.
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Something the producers may have to consider down the line is recasting or working around the current actors’ ages to fit the narrative. While a sequel to Shazam! has not been given the green-light, The Wrap has confirmed one of the co-writers, Henry Gayden, is developing the film. David F. Sandberg will return to direct while Peter Safran will produce.