8 Things You Need To Know About Shazam
6. He Was The First Superhero With A Live-Action Movie
David Sandberg's Shazam won't mark the character's cinematic debut.
You have to go all the way back to 1941 for that, which actually makes him the first superhero ever to appear in a live-action film. How's that for a piece of trivia?
The Adventures of Captain Marvel was a 12-part black and white serial with Tom Tyler in the title role and Frank Coghlan, Jr. as his young alter ego Billy Batson, adapted from the pages of the original Fawcett Comics.
The story pitted the Captain against a Villain called The Scorpion (it's lucky Marvel wasn't around back then, because that would probably have resulted in another lawsuit), a criminal mastermind who wants to get his mitts on an ancient weapon.
In its day, the film was considered a triumph, hailed as one of the greatest serials ever made, up there with the much-loved Flash Gordon series.