Shazam: 5 Things You Need To Know Before The Movie

Looks like the cat's out of the bag, thanks to the loose lips of one Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. DC have been trying their best to play catch up with the phenomenally successful Marvel Cinematic Universe, which has seen their closest comic book rivals adapt their superhero characters to the silver screen with huge box office returns and critical acclaim alike. To that end they recently announced plans for eleven upcoming movies of their own, and since then speculation has been rife as to what these projects actually are. We know we're getting Batman V Superman: Dour Of Justice sometime in 2016, Joseph Gordon Levitt's working on turning Neil Gaiman's sprawling Sandman series into a viable 90 minute feature aaaaaaand that's pretty much it so far as concrete details go. Or at least it was, until the former WWE champion-turned-really pretty good actor subtly hinted at and then just straight up announced he would be playing the DC villain Black Adam in an upcoming film. Who is Black Adam, you may ask? Why, he's the arch enemy of Shazam, of course! And, er, who's Shazam? Well, that one will take a little more explaining. Taking yet another page from the Marvel playbook and looking to some of their lesser-known properties to try and set the big screen alight, DC are plundering their archives for something that looks a little lighter, a little goofier, than the none-more-grim Man Of Steel and Christopher Nolan Batman films. If the rumour mill is churning out some quality product, then this might just be what they're looking for. Seriously, though, what the heck is a Black Adam? Or a Shazam for that matter? And why do people keep using the name "Captain Marvel" for this as-yet uncast superhero who looks suspiciously like Superman? We'll explain all of that, plus a whole lot more (well, like four points worth of more) as we go over the five things you need to know about Shazam.