'Shazam' Director Peter Segal Swears He Won't Go For Laughs

Our short leash for comic book movies here at The Big Picture is no secret: They make too many of them, and when they're average (Ghost Rider, Spider-Man 3), they deserve to be bruised pretty badly. Offer something good or stay home.

One of the more intriguing super hero flicks on the horizon is Shazam!, based on the Captain Marvel comic, which will be directed by Peter Segal (Get Smart). Now, if you've seen that trailer, you can tell that Get Smart is necessarily silly. Segal, in a wide-reaching interview on the subject of Shazam! with IGN, says you should expect something different with his comic book adaptation.

"I've read some people who've said I'm trying to make a lighter, funny Shazam!, which is not true," emphasizes Segal. "I want to stay very faithful to the source material there."

On the much-bandied casting talk of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson playing the Captain Marvel's rival, Black Adam, Segal admits it is, in fact, true, although his chronology doesn't match Johnson's. Several months ago, while promoting The Game Plan, Johnson said he'd leave it up to fans which role he'd pursue in Shazam!, hero or villain. According to Johnson, the fans voted Black Adam.

Segal's take doesn't really begin until a couple months ago:

"(W)e were looking for something else to do together (after Get Smart). He said, 'What are you working on?' And I told him among other things Shazam!. And he said, 'Do you think I can read a draft when you're ready?' And I said, 'Yeah.' John August is writing it and then we went on strike, so I don't have a draft to show him yet. But I just started telling him the story and I thought that he might be a great Black Adam. And what's fascinating now is even though the comic book was created and born in 1939 with Captain Marvel as the star, today Geoff Johns has made (Black Adam) one of the preeminent bad guys in several comics. And so that puts even more pressure on Dwayne for that role, in a good way."

So, if I read that right, Johnson didn't even know the story until after the writers' strike happened. Curious.

Additionally, Segal says that he expects the tone of Shazam! to be somewhere in between the campiness of Fantastic Four and more somber first two Spider-Man films.

IGN has a great, insightful chat with the director, so be sure to check it out.