Details Emerge on That Scrapped Superman Cameo in ‘Shazam!’

Remember at the end of Phantom Menace when Palpatine walks up to Anakin and says something like, "We will watch your career with great interest" and every nerd in the audience was pumped with the promise of a spectacular downfall to come? Well, apparently Superman's now scrapped cameo from Shazam! was basically the same thing.

When news broke yesterday that DC was no longer continuing its relationship with Henry Cavill—the current, in continuity, big screen Superman—a lot of blame was heaped on Cavill's inability to cameo in Shazam!. The cameo itself, if Umberto Gonzales of The Wrap is to be believed, involved nothing more than...

Clark at the end of the movie meeting with Billy Batson, the kid who [turns into] Shazam, telling him ‘Hey, we’re gonna keep an eye on you,’ that kind of thing."

Rubbish. If that's it, I'm glad they couldn't make it work. That's hella lame and super Phantom Menace-y for my taste. This is why Marvel is better at this sort of thing. Yes, they bungled a lot of early character introductions, but once they started crossing characters over into each other's movies, they did it for a reason.

This is just Superman showing up to validate the film's existence. "Rest assured, audience, that I, Superman, approve of this film and its message. On behalf of the entire DC Universe, we'd like to welcome Shazam to the family."

If this is why Cavill left, good for him. Conversely, if Cavill had to be the casualty of this terrible idea, I suppose it was ultimately worth it in the end.

Shazam! is in theaters on April 5, 2019, three weeks before Avengers 4.

[h/t ComicBookMovie]