In the first week of 2009, John August blogged a very detailed and definitive description of the death of the Shazam! movie. The blog included some surprise that Peter Segal was still being reported as the director, even though the Captain Marvel project was dead. Cut to eight months later and the project is apparently alive again at Warner Brothers, with Peter Segal still attached to direct.
Geoff Johns, one of the three DC writers that WB has attached as producers to their superhero slate, will be behind this new take on Shazam! and up-until-now TV Actor Bill Birch has been hired to write it.
Shazam! has had a particularly strange history that was greatly impacted by the writer’s strike, New Line’s death, and the success/failure of TDK/Speed Racer. It was reported in July that DC was having meetings and making strategies, after a very long period of sluggishness. The contrast between Marvel’s slick, thought-out, buzz-worthy, and unified approach and Warner Brother’s lumbering, disjointed, and shuffling one is giving me flashbacks to the 2008 election. This is not to say that Warner Brothers wants to or even should take the connective universe approach to their properties, but they could use a little of the across-the-board buzz that Marvel has managed to generate. It will be interesting to see how the coming years and emerging projects compete and capture the public’s interest as we move towards the second great wave of superhero films.
Source | THR