Comic-Con is always about managing fan expectations, and boy howdy did the internet run wild guessing at what surprises DC and Warner Bros. might bring with them to Hall H this year. Shazam: Fury of the Gods and Black Adam were the only two films listed on the slate, but folks couldn’t stop guessing what else might accompany them: would we see footage from Aquaman 2? The Flash? Maybe get an announcement about The Batman 2 or one of the streaming shows attached to it? Perhaps a tease at Crisis? Or would Henry Cavill show up and end the rumors that they’re trying to find another Superman?
Well, it turns out that you sometimes simply get what was advertised. The casts for Shazam 2 and Black Adam showed up, and we got brand-new trailers for both, but it was just a pair of pretty plain-jane Comic-Con panels on Saturday for the studio. RIP to the Twitter “leakers” whose engagement’s gonna drop like a stone after issuing bullshit rumors for the last few weeks.
Here’s the Shazam trailer, which includes your first glimpses of Helen Mirren and Lucy Liu in their respective roles and more Zachary Levi hi-jinks:
It’ll hit theaters around Christmas.
Secondly, here’s the “sneak peek” at Black Adam that Warner Bros. dropped, which features a cameo from Viola Davis as Amanda Waller (yeah, it’s still in the mainline DCEU, which is fascinating):
That will release on October 21, and as much as we hate doing this out of chronological order, you’ve already had time to watch the first trailer. Shazam‘s just a little more newsworthy.
As for news about the other projects on WB’s upcoming superhero slate, well, there wasn’t any. This is for two reasons. First, according to Deadline, DC Fandome is still happening, even though in-person conventions have returned, because every major studio with nerd properties in its IP arsenal has to have one of these dumb streaming conventions or their own hagiography-fest like Disney’s D23 festival. Second, and this is just our guess, both of these movies don’t have any of the kind of controversy that both of their 2023 releases have attached to them: Aquaman 2 has the whole Amber Heard boondoggle, and The Flash stars the one person wild enough to give old-school Charlie Sheen a run for his money, so it was probably best to punt them until those respective situations calm down and/or become much clearer. Hell, who the fuck knows if Flash is even going to come out anymore? Not us.