'Black Adam' shooting in summer 2020, confirms Dwayne Johnson

Dwayne Johnson has confirmed that Black Adam will finally start filming in July, 2020.

Johnson took to Twitter to make this announcement, doing so after a DC fan and sculpture King’s Letter made a statue of the actor as the character. Johnson was so enamoured with the piece that he responded with, “Very cool man, thank you. Amazing detail. This project has been with me for over 10 years. Production begins this July. Appreciate the support.”

Johnson was originally attached to star as Black Adam all the way back in 2007. But over the course of the last 12 years there have been many changes, not just to Warner Bros’ treatment of the DC cannon, but to the superhero genre in general.

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It wasn’t until 2017 that Johnson’s take on Black Adam really started to take shape, though, as David F Sandberg was brought on to direct. Sandberg eventually oversaw Shazam!, and since then Jaume Collet-Serra, who has just directed Johnson in Disney’s upcoming action adventure Jungle Cruise, has stepped into the director’s chair.

It was previously expected that Black Adam would debut in Shazam!, as the two characters have repeatedly gone toe-to-toe in the DC comics. However, while Johnson still served as an executive producer on Shazam!, Black Adam didn’t actually appear alongside Zachary Levi’s titular character.

Producer Hiram Garcia previously explained why to Collider, remarking, “As we were developing an actual Black Adam and Shazam movie, we were just realising that both characters are so special that we didn’t want to compromise either of them by cramming them both into the same movie.”

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“So that’s why we made the decision to let Shazam have his own standalone movie and kind of launch him properly, and then we’ll do the same for Black Adam. And so that kind of really freed things up. It allowed us to develop the right version of both.”

It still seems likely that the two will crossover eventually, though. Fingers crossed it is in Shazam’s planned sequel, which writer Henry Gayden, director David F Sandberg and producer Peter Safran are all returning for.