One of the most curious items on DC's film slate is the long in development Shazam. The only thing we've known for sure about the movie is that The Rock would be in it, now that connection may have led to the film finally finding a director. A new report claims a very interesting, and possibly a very telling connection, between DC, the Shazam movie, and director Brad Peyton who has worked with The Rock several times already.
Last week, The Rock took to social media and mentioned that he had just had a big meeting with the powers that be at DC regarding their film universe. The interesting bit comes not from the meeting, but from what happened afterward. As Batman-News points out, since the meeting, Geoff Johns, the President of DC Entertainment has begun to follow three new people on Twitter. Two of them are producing partners of Dwayne Johnson, Hiram Garcia, a VP of Johnson's Seven Bucks Productions, and Beau Flynn of Flynn Picture company, one of Seven Bucks' production partners, who both tweeted that they were in the same meeting. The third, however, is director Brad Peyton. There's no evidence that Peyton was in the meeting, though regardless of if he was or not, the fact that Johns began to follow him at this same point in time is certainly noteworthy.
Brad Peyton has been directing movies with The Rock since Journey 2: The Mysterious Island in 2008. Since then he's also directed, San Andreas and is attached to direct the sequel to that film, as well as The Rock's upcoming Rampage project. Did part of the meeting with DC also involve pitching Peyton as a potential director for Shazam? It would certainly seem that there's a connection between the director and that meeting. Peyton has no known connection to Seven Bucks Productions outside of his work as a director.
Certainly, this is all speculation at this point, though the fact that The Rock had a meeting with DC at all would seem to imply that there are plans to begin to pull Shazam out of the development hell that it's been sitting in for about as long as DC's film universe has been a thing. The Rock has been signed on to play Black Adam forever, but the film has been conspicuously missing a director as well as a star to play the title hero. If The Rock is taking meetings with DC at the producer level, certainly they would be interested in his ideas regarding who should direct the movie.
It will be interesting to see how things shake out from here. If Brad Peyton is eventually announced as the director of Shazam, the source of the news will be an indication of just how much one can learn from social media. It may also indicate just how involved The Rock will be with DC's Extended Universe going forward.
