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The Wonder Woman appearance in Shazam! Fury of the Gods is explained in great depth by the film’s director, David F. Sandberg. Shazam! from 2019 had a headless appearance by Superman since Henry Cavill, who plays the Man of Steel, was unable to appear in certain moments. Shazam! now! Gal Gadot returns as Wonder Woman in Fury of the Gods, which makes fun of the DC appearance in the first film.
***SPOILER ALERT***
The following content contains spoilers for Shazam! Fury of the Gods.
Recently, in a chat with Collider, Sandberg went into great depth as he opened up about how the Wonder Woman appearance in Shazam! Fury of the Gods came about. Shazam! Fury of the Gods, according to the filmmaker, went through the same procedure with Wonder Woman that the previous film did with Superman. Nobody anticipated Diana to play such a significant part in the film in such a little amount of time, with the heroine resurrecting Shazam, even if the Shazam 2 previews gave away Wonder Woman’s appearance alongside Gadot. Sandberg had a backup plan in place because she was concerned that the significant anticipated Gadot appearance might not go as planned.
Explaining about the same, the director said, “I mean, the funny thing was, in the first movie we were gonna have Henry [Cavill] show up as Superman. Then, when we were shooting that scene, they were like, “Well, Henry is not gonna make it on this day, so we’ll shoot it with a stand-in and then we’ll have to pick up his coverage later on.” It’s like, “Okay…” So, we shot it like that, and then the Henry thing fell apart and we couldn’t do it. So we had to just use the stand-in footage, and that’s why it ends before you see his face.”
He went on to add, “So for this one, Wonder Woman was in the script and I was like, “It’s not really gonna happen.” I mean, it makes sense because of the mythology and the Greek gods and everything, but it’s like, “I don’t believe it’s gonna happen.” And then, when we were shooting that scene, or the majority of it, it was the same thing, like, “Oh, you’re gonna have to shoot with a stand-in and then we’ll pick her pieces up because she’s not gonna make it here to Atlanta at this time.” (…) Can we have [Helen Mirren’s] character actually survive? It’s gonna be so lame if she shows up.” But that was sort of my Plan B.” “But then it actually happened and we were actually able to shoot with her, which made me very happy.” he continued.