The post-credit scenes for any superhero movie tend to hint at the direction of the sequel. Maybe it gets paid off in the very next film, which is how Marvel Studios treated their post-credits scenes throughout Phases One and Two. Other times, the post-credit scene goes nowhere, like when Henry Cavill appeared as Superman in the end of Black Adam, and we now know nothing is going to come of that promised throwdown. Something similar happened with the upcoming DC Films movie Shazam: Fury of the Gods, which doesn’t acknowledge the tease from the end of Shazam! But writer Henry Gayden says there’s a reason.
As you can tell from the trailers for Shazam: Fury of the Gods, the main villains of the sequel are the Daughters of Atlas, played by Helen Mirren, Lucy Liu, and Rachel Zegler. There’s no sign of Dr. Sivana, who was played by Mark Strong in the first Shazam movie and could be seen imprisoned in the post credits scene, where he is approached by a caterpillar that DC Comics fans instantly recognized as Mister Mind. Never heard of him? Read up on this feature of things you need to know about Mister Mind from DC Comics. It looked like this:
“Oh what fun we’re going to have together,” Mister Mind says. “The Seven Realms are about to be ours!” Then he lets out a maniacal laugh. Classic sequel tease, right? Except it didn’t happen. So when given the chance to speak with screenwriter Henry Gayden, who wrote both Shazam movies to date, I asked him if Dr. Sivana and Mister Mind were ever part of the sequel plans, and he told CinemaBlend:
There was a long period of developing it and going down various alleys, like who the villain is, Sivana, Mister Mind, all these things that we did. But the one core thing that was there from the jump after the first movie was (that) the next story for Billy is, now that he has a family, how does he behave? And it is, now that he has it, he's terrified to lose it.
We took a deep dive into the Shazam trailers. Found out what we learned.
Keeping the focus on Billy Batson (Asher Angel) and the foster family that he found in Shazam! makes a lot of sense. That warmth and humanity that permeated the first movie helps set this franchise apart from some of the more brooding and epic stories that take place in the DCU. The levity was appreciated. But Gayden also admitted that they worked hard to keep Mister Mind in Shazam: Fury of the Gods… until it just stopped making sense. The writer said:
It was a few months. And it was really fun. But what ended up happening is it felt redundant with the first movie. Because despite Mister Mind being a fascinating new edition, it still was a lot of Sivana and Billy, and it didn't feel like it was telling an emotional next installment. It just felt like it was telling the natural next installment, action wise. So emotionally, when we got to the sisters and the Daughters of Atlas, it was about like, ‘How do we get these powers? Do we deserve them?’ Questioning that, and really telling that story was much more compelling than continuing the Sivana story right now. That's not to say they were in the future. And I had to take… one of my favorite things I've ever written, I wrote for the Sivana drafts. But I think, ultimately, this emotionally was the best story to tell.
Fans will be able to find out for themselves when Shazam: Fury of the Gods opens in theaters on March 17. It’s the first of several Upcoming DC Movies that are coming to theaters this year, and will lead into The Flash, which is poised to spin the DC Universe in exciting new directions for the foreseeable future.
