Black Adam may not have thrown in any reference to Shazam, but the World’s Mightiest Mortal hasn’t disappeared from the DC Extended Universe. Following Zachary Levi’s debut as the superhero form of Asher Angel’s Billy Batson in 2019, Shazam! Fury of the Gods (which Dwayne Johnson reportedly turned down appearing in) is bringing the enthusiastic superhero back alongside his Shazamily siblings, who gained their powers towards the end of the first Shazam! movie. Fury of the Gods is the first of four upcoming DC movies slated for 2023, and the first predictions for how much it could make on opening weekend have come in.
As shared by THR, some box office analysts, including those from Hollywood research firm NRG, are predicting that Shazam! Fury of the Gods, which comes out on March 17, will only pull in between $35-40 million on its opening weekend. Box Offie Mojo was slightly more optimistic with its prediction, saying that the range will be between $43-52 million over those first days. Either way, that’s a decrease from the $53.5 million that Shazam! collected during its opening weekend in April 2019.
To be clear, these are just estimates, and it’s entirely possible that Shazam! Fury of the Gods could surpass Shazam!’s opening weekend… or make even less than what these various parties are currently predicting. Still, it doesn’t sound like Fury of the Gods, the second superhero movie to open in 2023 following Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, is expected to make that big of a splash at the box office come mid-March. The Shazam! sequel is the only major studio film opening on March 17, but the weekend before sees the release of Scream VI from Paramount Pictures and the Adam Driver-led 65 from Sony Pictures, and Lionsgate’s John Wick: Chapter 4 arrives on the following weekend.
Although Shazam!’s mid-credits scene teased an alliance between Dr. Thaddeus Sivana and the talking caterpillar known as Mister Mind, Shazam! Fury of the Gods will see the Shazam heroes taking on Helen Mirren’s Hespera, Lucy Liu’s Kalypso and Rachel Zegler’s Anthea, the daughters of Atlas, one of the mythological figures from whom Billy Batson and his foster siblings draw their powers. Behind the scenes, David F. Sandberg and Henry Gayden reprised their respective directing and writing duties, with Chris Morgan also working on the script. The first Fury of the Gods trailer premiered at San Diego Comic-Con last year, and you can watch the sequel’s most recent trailer below.
If you’d like to rewatch Shazam! before Shazam! Fury of the Gods arrives, stream it and the other DC movies in order with an HBO Max subscription. If you haven’t been keeping track of the sequel’s development, read through the other things we know about Fury of the Gods.
