John August, who has been working on a Shazam screenplay for a couple years now, reports on his blog that the project is pretty much officially dead. And for the most bizarre of reasons,
When we turned the new draft in to the studio, we got a reaction that made me wonder if anyone at Warners had actually read previous drafts or the associated notes. The studio felt the movie played too young. They wanted edgier. They wanted Billy to be older. They wanted Black Adam to appear much earlier.
(I pointed out that Black Adam appears on page one, but never got a response.)
In other words, since Dark Knight did such huge box office, Warner Brothers is now going to try to turn every DC-related property into dark Frank Miller-esque orgies of violence. Ugh.
It’s part Dark Knight envy, and part “The Spirit was lighthearted and bombed, no more lighthearted movies”. When the early reviews of The Spirit came in I turned to my fiancee and said “Well, that will kill any fun superhero movies this year.”
I thought the DK movie was okay but I’m not a big fan of the Miller version of Batman. Still I get it, but Richard Donner’s Superman movies and The Incredibles were also both huge successes without being edgy.
The way things are going, when it comes time to make Shazam it will end up being a Quentin Tarantino project.