Merrick here...


I'll be the first to admit I'm not the most qualified person to write this post. I'm familiar with this concept only in general terms & from the iffy live-action Saturday morning show back in the 70s.

As such, I'm not sure what to make of this news other than...instinctively...I'm not convinced this approach is necessarily the right one. Comedy and superheroes have never mixed well for me; I suppose such hybridization could work if there's ginormous heart and soul behind it.

The opposite of this is: I'd rather have a successful comedic superhero movie than a tightly wound, self-important crappy one.

Like I said...what do I know?

Over at MTV, screenwriter John August (CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY, BIG FISH, and the two CHARLIE'S ANGELS films) talks a bit about his plans for the SHAZAM movie.

“It’s not Spider-Man plus jokes. There’s really good comic potential there,” he asserted, revealing that his film — an origin story — owes as much to “Big” as it does to “Superman.”

“Yeah, I avoid saying that because that incenses certain people,” August laughed of the comparison. “But the people that are going to go see this movie opening weekend are going to be excited to see [action and comedy] together.”

...says a blog entry that can be found HERE.

This is news to which I say...

When I was a kid, I often watched SHAZAM on Saturday mornings. I thought that RV was sooo damn cool...a house you could drive!? But it also had a lightning bolt on it! That rocked. It never occurred to me that I could draw my own lightning bolt on a piece of poster board and tape it to the front of my mom's pick-up. Seeing this footage, looks pretty much like what they did when making the show.

I wonder if August is incorporating an RV with a lightning bolt on it into his script? Probably not. If not, I'm sooooooo disinterested...