Tweet

Perhaps to avoid confusions and comparisons to the 1996 blockbuster Kazaam, which starred the hilarious Shaquille O’Neal and was thoroughly snubbed by the Oscars that year, the new Captain Marvel project is being renamed.

Those intrepid hounds over at IESB are reporting that the name will be much longer: Billy Batson and the Legend of Shazam.

The name isn’t final, and has plenty of time to change again, but I’m not thrilled with it. It seems like they are going for a campy feel, and I doubt that will pack them into theaters. I’m a big fan of the original Captain Marvel movies – mostly because they are campy – but the marketing team is up against a difficult sell already since its not a very well-known super hero, and the super hero movie market is becoming saturated. Hell, if it wasn’t saturated when Daredevil came out it definitely was by the time Ghost Rider burned its way onto the screen.

But John August – who penned the script – is fantastic, and Dwayne ‘The People’s Eyebrow’ Johnson has long been confirmed to play Black Adam. If they can only secure a cameo from Shaq as Professor Luther Bentley, the trifecta would be complete, and this film would be unstoppable.