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.