Can 'Shazam!' Fight Off Superhero Fatigue?
by EG
After decades of flocking in huge numbers to nearly every superhero movie, are audiences finally starting to tire of the theater-ruling genre? The disappointing performance of Marvel's Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania could hint that comic book titles are no longer guaranteed blockbusters, and lukewarm anticipation for this week's Shazam! Fury of the Gods could be evidence that the trend may be continuing. Still, Shazam is likely to win the weekend, with only last week's winner Scream 6 providing any real competition. Read on for details.
DC and New Line Cinema’s Shazam! Fury of the Gods is hoping for some heavenly help when opening this weekend in thousands of theaters across the U.S. and world.
According to prerelease tracking, the superhero pic is expected to start off with $35 million-plus in North America, compared to the $53.5 million domestic debut of Shazam! in 2019, not adjusted for inflation. No major Hollywood studios sets out to make a sequel that doesn’t match the first, leaving many to wonder whether tracking is being too conservative in this instance.
Yet families -- which played a key role in the first movie’s performance -- remain a challenged moviegoing demo in the pandemic era.
Fury of the Gods is the 12th installment in the DC Extended Universe, and the first to be released since filmmaker James Gunn and Shazam! producer Peter Safran were named co-heads of DC Studios, home to some of the most iconic superheroes in comic book history (beginning with Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman).
Like rival Marvel Studios, DC is also mining lesser known superheroes, such as Shazam.
Should Fury of the Gods actually come in at $35 million it could also raise concerns about superhero fatigue. In recent weeks, Marvel and Disney’s threequel Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania debuted to a relatively tepid $106.1 million domestically before suffering the worst sophomore drop-off of any film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Shazam 2‘s villains are the Daughters of Atlas, a trio of ancient goddesses who have come to Earth to reclaim the magical powers that the wizard Shazam (Djimon Hounsou) took from them.
Get the rest of the story at The Hollywood Reporter.