Dwayne Johnson has revealed the first trailer for Black Adam, and he wasn’t wrong when he said the DCEU was about to change. In the footage, we see Johnson’s anti-hero enter the universe, and proceed to wreck everything in his path.
We get some of Black Adam’s backstory, with Johnson playing the regular version on Kahndaq. In his comics origin, Black Adam is imprisoned for 5,000 years, before being awakened on Earth, where he becomes the arch-nemesis of Shazam. There’s no explicit Shazam connection in this trailer, but there are plenty of nods to the wider DC universe, with Aldis Hodge’s Hawkman and Noah Centineo’s Atom Smasher front and centre as well.
They’re part of the Justice Society of America, with Pierce Brosnan’s Doctor Fate. Yes, this is a different team to the Justice League, and typically not quite as big a deal, but this is a Dwayne Johnson movie, so these could very well become main cinematic team going forward. In any case, Doctor Fate appears to be the one who tries to reason with Black Adam.
You can watch the Black Adam trailer below:
“This passion project has become my DNA and the hierarchy of power in the DC Universe will change,” Johnson said in his tweet. “The world needed a hero. It got Black Adam.”
It seems Black Adam has essentially been made into evil Superman for the purposes of the film. This isn’t surprising, since that’s kind of what he is anyway. Jaume Collet-Serra directs the adventure movie, from a script by Adam Sztykiel, Rory Haines, and Sohrab Noshirvani.
Black Adam smashes into theatres October 21, 2022.