Tue Jan 6, 2009 — by Glenn Hauman

'Shazam' movie 'deader than a doornail'

Big Red Cheese tossed in garbage

Screenwriter John August describes the sequence of events that led up to, shall we say, the death of Captain Marvel the movie:

I took them at their (written) word and delivered what they said they wanted: a much harder movie, with a lot more Black Adam. This wasn’t “Big, with super powers” anymore. It was Black Adam versus Captain Marvel, with a considerable push into dark territory and liminal badlands like Nanda Parbat. It wasn’t the action-comedy I’d signed on to write, but it was a movie I could envision getting made. The producer and director liked it, and turned it in to the studio while I was in France.

By the time I got back, the project was dead.

By “dead,” I mean that it won’t be happening. I don’t think it’s on the studio’s radar at all. It may come back in another incarnation, with another writer, but I can say with considerable certainty that it won’t be the version I developed.

Whether this is from the internal shake-ups at New Line, or residual inertia from the writers' strike, or just Hollywood silliness, is hard to gauge.

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