Will The Rock's Black Adam Debut In Justice League?
Dwayne Johnson promising a big surprise...
Even with the positive early reactions to Wonder Woman that squirmed through the embargoing fingers of Warner Bros' marketing team in the wake of Friday's screening, the DCEU could do with an injection of solid gold bankability. So, the sooner they get The Rock in, the better.
Johnson is set to play Black Adam, with the last update from the WWE legend suggesting he's getting his own stand-alone first before a Shazam movie spins off it. And since he keeps hinting at it, there are big rumours that he will fight Superman at some point too. On that last point, Johnson has once again said it's "in the cards," which would be an interesting way to introduce him.
Inevitably, though, introducing him as a pure villain against a moral extreme like Superman would be a mistake, because it gives the audience little space to fall for him as an anti-hero (which is definitely what the DCEU needs if they are to trade on him as their version of Loki).
Interestingly, Johnson is also teasing some more details: he would love to see Armie Hammer as Shazam, for instance, and more intriguingly, he's also told Fandango that there is a big surprise in store for fans of Black Adam:
“It’s definitely going to happen, sure. We’ve had great conversations with Geoff Johns and everyone over at DC. It’s an exciting time right now for everyone at DC because they are in a process now where they are building out [their DC universe] really nicely. We have a really cool surprise for Black Adam that I can’t reveal, in terms of where we will see Black Adam being introduced.”
Inevitably, that has made the entire Internet leap to the conclusion that he's going to appear in Justice League, since that's coming up soon. Barring a post-credits tease, it would be a little odd to see him shoe-horned into that ensemble, though - so maybe we'll see him in Aquaman or The Flash instead? When you consider those two, it's arguably even less likely (he's not an underwater villain, and The Flash's story is likely to be focused on his mother's murder.
So what about Suicide Squad 2? That'd be a bold move, but it would basically recapture the injection of charm Johnson added to The Fast & Furious franchise, so it might not be as unexpected as the other stand-alones.
Whatever the case, it all sounds very intriguing.