The Rock reportedly bent DC Studios to his will and ultimately got himself and Henry Cavill fired while tanking the next superhero movie at the box office

BY PRARTHANA PRAKASH
March 22, 2023 at 6:00 PM EDT

The DC Comics superheroes Black Adam, Superman, and Shazam were always meant to clash, but not quite this way. Turns out, Dwayne Johnson, also known as “The Rock,” reportedly pressured DC Studios on creative decisions when he made his long-awaited debut in the dominant comic-book-movie genre, TheWrap reported Tuesday.

First, some comics background: Zachary Levi has played Shazam, the quirky yet powerful superhero in the eponymous movie, which was a modest hit film in 2019. But Shazam is the traditional rival to Johnson’s Black Adam character, whose own film bombed in 2022 and which curiously didn’t feature Levi at all. Now Levi’s second run at the character, in Shazam! Fury Of The Gods, debuted last week and underperformed at the box office, with disastrous reviews—and no sign of the original Black Adam.

Johnson’s plan of becoming the apex of the DC universe backfired in a matter of months when both he and the past decade’s Superman, Henry Cavill, were unceremoniously sacked last December by DC Studios. Now, the latest offering from DC bombed so badly that some critics thought it didn’t make a mark. The movie only made an estimated $30.5 million in the opening weekend—far below $53.5 million earned by the first installment in the series in its first week. It seems like The Rock had a little to do with that, too.

Johnson reportedly turned down the idea of sharing screen space with Levi in a post-credits scene, typically a short yet important snippet at the end of most superhero movies that teases an upcoming movie in the franchise. When promoting Black Adam, Johnson promoted his face-off with Superman, played by Cavill, undermining “Shazam” in the public eye. And Levi has seemed to confirm the bad blood on social media, reposting a story to his Instagram about TheWrap’s report on Johnson’s refusal to work with him.

[...]