“There’s not one single person that I have blamed for anything about the way that our movie has performed,” the actor said.
Zachary Levi
Leon Bennett/Getty
Zachary Levi took to Instagram to clarify that he doesn’t blame Dwyane Johnson — or anyone — for nixing the originally planned post-credits scene in Shazam! Fury of the Gods, which would’ve seen Justice Society of America members inviting the sequel’s title character to join their group.
On Tuesday, Levi seemed to call out Johnson after a story from The Wrap reported that the Black Adam star blocked Justice Society characters from appearing in the Shazam! sequel and shot down the possibility of a Levi cameo in his movie. In his Instagram Story, the Chuck alum shared a post mentioning the reporting and added “The truth shall set you free.”
“I may or may not have, you know, reposted something in my Stories about a story that I had nothing to do with that [The Wrap] had reported on, and then I got flack about it because people were saying ‘Oh, What are you doing? You’re trying to blame this guy because your movie’s not doing well. Like you’re trying to blame us,’” Levi said in an Instagram Live on Thursday. “Listen, I haven’t blamed anybody. There’s not one single person that I have blamed for anything about the way that our movie has performed.”
It was known that members of the Justice Society were supposed to appear in Fury of the Gods since Black Adam and Shazam are rivals in the comics. The sequel’s filmmaker David F. Sandberg told The Hollywood Reporter that the original post-credits scene “fell apart three days before we were going to roll cameras.”
Levi doubled down on the fact that he wasn’t blaming anyone and had his own thoughts about why the film wasn’t doing well at the box office and doesn’t have great critics’ reviews on Rotten Tomatoes.
“The reason I decided to share that was not because I wanna blame anybody for anything,” he continued. “It’s because I do not want to be blamed for things that are not on me. And as a leader, and I believe, a protector of my family, my Shazam-ly and everyone who worked so hard on these movies … we have been doing everything we can to fight for you, the fans.”
He went on to explain that the Shazam! team even tried to get Henry Cavill to appear in the 2019 film and wasn’t allowed to make it happen. Having grown up as a self-proclaimed comic nerd, Levi said he wants to give audiences all the crossovers and callbacks that they could possibly want.
The American Underdog actor also touched on the post-credits scene they ended up creating for Fury of the Gods, which featured — spoiler alert! — Peacemaker and The Suicide Squad stars Jennifer Holland and Steve Agee.
“People are slagging on James Gunn because Jennifer Holland, his wife, who is an actress, who’s on Peacemaker and was in Suicide Squad, yes, but is connected to the Justice Society,” Levi shared. “We used Jennifer and Steve in that scene, in the mid-credit scene, in Shazam!, but that was not the original intent.”
He continued, “The original intent was to have Hawkman and Cyclone be there to invite me… by the way, this is a little bit of a spoiler alert for anybody who hasn’t seen the movie. Sorry, whatever, it’s all online anyway. So, our intent, our desire — Walter Hamada, Peter Safran, David Sandberg, myself, everybody — we had an awesome scene that would have tied me in to the JSA with Hawkman and with Cyclone, and we were thwarted.”
He, again, explained that he wasn’t trying to blame anybody for the movie’s performance but instead just wanted to defend the people who deserved it.
“I’m coming to the defense of truth because truth is good,” Levi said. “We should all live in it guys, even when it’s hard, even when it’s something that might fly in the face of something that we already might have believed before and now it challenges whatever our idea or our opinion is. We need to live in the truth.”
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Christy Pina