SHAZAM! Director of FURY OF THE GODS on the decision to include a specific cameo in the marketing
Shazam! wrath of the gods is in theaters now (you can check out our review Here), and if you’re not online much and managed to avoid a recent TV spot, you might have been surprised when a certain DCEU character showed up towards the end of the film.
spoiler in advance.
Although her involvement has been pretty much corroborated by merch, the teaser in question apparently spoiled a fairly significant cameo of Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman, who shows up after the final fight to revive (You didn’t think it would stay dead, right?) Billy Batson after making the ultimate sacrifice to save the city.
When speaking to THR, Director David F. Sandberg admitted he was “surprised” by the decision to star Diana in the spot.
“I just got back from the press tour and I got a text like, ‘Hey, why are you spoiling Wonder Woman?’ And I was like, ‘What are you talking about?’ So I didn’t know and they apologized for letting them didn’t keep me posted. But I understand why they did it because they wanted people to see the film. So of course I understand, but it’s a shame because nowadays the only viewers who see these films as intended are test audiences. For example, when they saw the film, they didn’t know that Rachel Zegler’s character was a goddess. For her it was actually a twist that worked, but once the marketing has started you have to show her in her goddess attire and the whole thing is out of the bag. So it won’t really surprise anyone that she’s an undercover goddess in a school.
Before Gadot’s appearance was confirmed, we’d heard the sequel would feature a “fake Wonder Woman,” who turned out to be part of a dream sequence in which Batson imagined a date with the stunning Justice Leaguer.
The magician then enters the dream and we see Djimon Hounsou’s face superimposed on model Taylor Cahill’s body.
So, would Gadot always be part of the movie?
“From the beginning and from the first script. She was always supposed to be there, but I didn’t think it would happen because of what happened in the first movie where we had to do a headless Superman cameo.” remembers Sandberg. “I thought that would happen here too. So I started thinking, “Okay, if she can’t or if it falls apart, how do we bring Shazam back to life?” Do we have to bring Helen Mirrens back? character, Hespera, back? What are we going to do?” But then it actually happened, which was great because then we could make fun of the headless cameo from the first movie, with the wizard dream sequence and things like that, but we never could have done that , if we hadn’t actually done Gal at the end because people would have been angry.”
What did you think of Wonder Woman’s performance? Have you been spoiled before? Drop us a comment below.
