Filming Underway on Shazam! Starring Zachary Levi
Right on schedule, Horror director David Sandberg (Lights Out) has started filming the “magical super hero action adventure” Shazam! starring Asher Angel (Andi Mack) as the kid who becomes the adult super hero Shazam (Zachary Levi) by saying his name. The movie is being produced by New Line Cinema rather than Warner Bros. proper, but the press release announcing the start of filming described the movie as “firmly set in the DC universe but with his own distinctly fun, family centric tone.”
Here’s the official synopsis:
We all have a superhero inside us, it just takes a bit of magic to bring it out. In Billy Batson’s (Angel) case, by shouting out one word—SHAZAM!—this streetwise 14-year-old foster kid can turn into the adult Super Hero Shazam (Levi), courtesy of an ancient wizard. Still a kid at heart—inside a ripped, godlike body—Shazam revels in this adult version of himself by doing what any teen would do with superpowers: have fun with them! Can he fly? Does he have X-ray vision? Can he shoot lightning out of his hands? Can he skip his social studies test? Shazam sets out to test the limits of his abilities with the joyful recklessness of a child. But he’ll need to master these powers quickly in order to fight the deadly forces of evil controlled by Dr. Thaddeus Sivana (Strong).
Shazam! was written by Henry Gayden and Darren Lemke. The cast includes Mark Strong as Dr. Thaddeus Sivana and Ron Cephas Jones as the Wizard, with Jack Dylan Grazer, Grace Fulton, Faithe Herman, Ian Chen, Jovan Armand, Cooper Andrews and Marta Milans.
The movie opens in theaters on April 5, 2019.