“Black Adam” star Dwayne Johnson reflected Sunday on recent controversial changes made to the DC Extended Universe, including the decision to shelve his character for the foreseeable future.
At the 95th Academy Awards, Johnson addressed the decision by new DC bosses James Gunn and Peter Safran to drop any potential “Black Adam” projects and recast Superman (previously played by Henry Cavill). Cavill announced in October that he would be returning to the DCEU as Superman after appearing in the end credits scene of “Black Adam” earlier that month.
However, in December, the actors received word from Gunn and Safran that their versions of the superheroes would not be moving forward in the DCEU any time soon.
“It’s almost like when you have a professional football team and your quarterback wins championships and your head coach wins championships and then a new owner comes along and says, ‘He’s not my coach, he’s not my quarterback. I’m going to go with someone new,'” Johnson said. Variety on the red carpet at the Oscars in Hollywood.
Just days after the first “Black Adam” movie opened in theaters, Gunn and Safran took over DC and immediately began dismantling the studio’s existing content and launch strategy. In addition to benching Johnson’s Black Adam and Cavill’s Superman, the new co-directors were also among the executives who decided to scrap “Wonder Woman 3,” starring Gal Gadot and directed by Patty Jenkins.
“All I can do, and all we could do when we were making ‘Black Adam,’ was do our best and surround ourselves with the best people and deliver the best movie we could,” Johnson told Variety on Sunday. .
“Our audience score was in the 90s. The critics took a couple of shots, but that’s just business.”
In December, Johnson alerted fans in a sentence that Black Adam would be left out of Gunn and Safran’s “first chapter of the narrative”. He added that the studio had “agreed to continue exploring valuable ways Black Adam can be used in future chapters of the DC multiverse.”
“James and I have known each other for years and have always supported each other to succeed,” Johnson said at the time.
“It’s no different now, and I will always support DC (and Marvel) to win and WIN BIG. … I have very thick skin, and you can always count on me to be direct with my words.”
