The hierarchy of the DCEU is set to change forever next year because Dwayne Johnson’s Black Adam is coming. Boasting all the powers of Shazam, but lacking his moral compass, Adam is one of DC’s deadliest ‘heroes’, and it seems he’s got his eyes on one hero in particular: Superman.
Yes, Johnson has once again teased a showdown between his dark defender and the Man of Steel, although he doesn’t know who’ll be playing Superman. “To me, there’s a battle that’s going to go down one day, between Black Adam and Superman,” he told Total Film. “I don’t know who that Superman is going to be, and I don’t know who’s going to play him. That’s OK. I don’t need to know right now. But I’m confident in knowing that.”
The question of who’ll play Superman in the future has been a pernicious one for Warner Bros. In-universe Henry Cavill’s version of the iconic hero is still technically the canonical Superman, and the actor has said he’d like to reprise the role. Still, there have been whispers that Warner Bros. is planning on rebooting the Man of Tomorrow with a new, Black actor in the lead role, so who knows what the future holds.
Johnson certainly has big ambitions for Adam and his place in the DCEU. That said, he’s dedicated to getting the character’s first movie right for now and is hoping to avoid the mistakes previous DC movies have made.
“You get one shot out of the gates to build these characters properly,” he explained. “We paid attention to some of the pitfalls that other films had experienced in the past, in the world of DC, and what, rightfully, got a lot of fans unhappy and pissed – and, as a fan, I was one of them.”
Black Adam thunders into theatres on July 29, 2022. If you need more DC action movies in your life before then, check out our guide on The Batman, or if you like your heroes with great hair, we have a feature breaking down everything you need to know about Aquaman 2.