Black Adam is shaping up to be one out-of-the-box superhero film. Starring Dwayne Johnson in the title role, the upcoming DC film won't shy away from the unorthodox qualities of the character. Recently, our own Steve Weintraub spoke with film producer Hiram Garcia about his and Johnson's Red Notice, and Garcia promised us that "we were setting a tone here with Black Adam and that this is a guy who doesn't pull his punches. We didn't go soft with him... I think we let people know this guy is a very different character than Shazam or Superman or so forth. He is a bad dude. He's probably the most powerful person in the DC Universe right now, and he's a handful, but DJ does a really good job of bringing him to life, and I think fans are going to have a lot of fun watching him."
Could fans have so much fun with this antihero that they want an entire Black Adam franchise of more movies or HBO Max TV shows? Or could the Justice Society of America, a pre-Justice League coalition being set up by this film, be the focus of future spin-offs? After all, James Gunn is giving Peacemaker his own HBO Max series after The Suicide Squad — could Garcia and his team do the same?
The answer, excitingly, is that they've been planning this since the beginning.
"We have always had a vision of where we saw we wanted this to go," revealed Garcia. "We've never viewed this as just a one-off movie. I'm such a gigantic comic book nerd and fan, and I love this universe so much, if you can tell from my excitement about talking about all these things. I've always gotten into this with a vision of, 'This is the story we want to tell, this is where we would love to see this go, this is how we would see multiple pictures play out, possibly including spinoffs for individual characters,' but there's always been a rough, kind of loose outline in our head on an imaginary whiteboard of how we'd want to do it. As we're making that, we start to look at that a little bit more. But, again, ultimately, we need the movie to be received well and we want fans to like it, but there's 100% a vision of what we'd like to be doing in a multiple picture aspect when it comes to Black Adam and the JSA."
It's compelling to hear that Garcia and the team have an expanded vision from the jump of their creations. It's also compelling to hear him speak about the open creativity fostered working with DC, as it relates to whether to continue the universe through films, HBO Max series, or both:
"I think when it comes to the DC Universe — this is the great thing about being at Warner and DC — is you have gigantic conversations with all the tentacles there of being able to generate content and tell these stories. So we have met with everyone from every corner of DC Universe about how we can bring certain characters to life, how we can continue and build out the worlds on some of these characters, and it's just about finding the right home for it. But nothing is left off the table when you're dealing with characters of this nature and scale and in terms of how we can best deliver more content to the fans. So that continues to go, and you're going to start to hear announcements regarding some of these characters and who we're going to finally be able to tell a little bit more on going forward."
Garcia went on to reiterate that the first, most important task of a Black Adam film is for its fans to enjoy it and want more of an expanded universe. But if and when they do, Garcia and his team are ready:
"As our job, it's always to be ready to have that when the fans want it. But on top of it, it's the joy of telling these kinds of stories. Obviously, when you're dealing with superheroes and DC characters like this, there's a little bit of a different path because everything's connected. So we 100% have plans and visions for a storyline that we would love to do with this character as well as planning how we're going to roll out the other characters within this universe that we're introducing and continue telling stories on the characters that we are going to introduce in the movie. So, obviously, we introduce a lot of new characters in here, and a lot of these characters are big fan favorites, so we're currently working on spinoffs that we can do for some of those characters. We're fleshing it all out, and we have very big ambitions for it. The priority is always making sure we launch this movie right, but we're always going to be ready when the time comes to be able to jump into those other movies and tell those stories when the fans want."
Garcia also spoke highly of the mediascape we currently exist in, in which these kinds of universe-expanding stories and platforms are openly desired by the fans and given room to flourish: "What a fortunate time we're in where we have all those platforms to be able to tell those stories, right? I think as a storyteller you just want to have the space and the room and the platforms to tell as many stories as you can with these worlds you love. So it's a great time right now to do what we do and to have so many opportunities to tell these stories. It's just about picking the ones that rise to the top for us and help contribute to the overall vision that we have for this universe, so we're fully in it, and there's going to be more coming out soon."
Black Adam comes to theaters on July 29, 2022, and we will keep you posted on any future spin-off movies or shows as soon as we know.