Bill Birch To Write Shazam! For DC Peter Segal's reboot of Captain Marvel Source: Variety
John August. The great William Goldman. Bryan Goluboff. Joel Cohen and Alec Sokolow.
No, it’s not a deadly Screenwriters’ 5-a-side team, Empire’s next opponents in the Movie Football League (we’re third in the table at the moment, beneath Five Key Grips, All Called Keith and Best Boys United). Rather, that’s the full list of writers who’ve taken a crack at adapting Shazam!, the Warner Bros. superhero movie based on DC’s iconic hero, Captain Marvel, and – by sheer dint of the fact that the movie hasn’t been made despite three years of development – who have all failed in their task.
Bill Birch will be hoping that he isn’t the sixth name on that fairly illustrious list. He was brought on board today to write the movie, about a teenager named Billy Batson who can transform into the ultra-powerful, ultra-built Captain Marvel (seen above, in a great Alex Ross piece) after uttering the eponymous password. Birch’s orders are, apparently, to delve back into the comic book for sources of inspiration, which would seem like a bit of a no-brainer, but don’t mind us, we’ll just be over here, in the corner, not saying anything.
Peter Segal, director of Get Smart, is still on board to yell ‘action!’ and do that framing things with his hands if and when Birch comes up with a decent script. Birch is already writing a script, One Finger Salute, for Segal, so it looks like they have a good working relationship.
Is this the end of Shazam!’s production travails? Find out in the next exciting news story that Empire writes about it!
Hey there, just to let you know that warner bros have hired people to write the Flash, so i'm sure they'll be some news soon. And The Green Arrow(who is one of my favs), Justin Marks has already written a script and i recently read that the another writer has come on board to help Marks flesh out the script. It's Called Green Arrow: Escape from Supermax. The Green Arrow is framed for the murder of Col. Khalid and sentanced to spend the rest of his life in... Read More
to see that DC finally appear to be making an effort to get some of their heroes onto the big screen, i love DC, nothing against marvel but its DC all the way. im quite exited about Captain Marvel but im still desperatly waiting for a the Flash film to get made. my only hope is that all of teh new DC films are made to look like they are from the same world so that when they finally get around to doing a Justice league film they all fit. and i may be the only person who says this but no more re-i... Read More
Geoff Johns, fabled DC comics writer (Superman, Green Lantern, Infinite Crisis, 52, etc) was writing this as well? Hopefully this film will somehow subtly tie in to Green Lantern, and we'll finally get a proper DC movie universe... ... Read More
Captain Marvel is one of the underrated characters of DC Comics just like Green Lantern. His powers can rival that of Superman's. We need more and more DC characters to be put on the big screen. Yes we are having Green Lantern at long last, we still need The Flash, Wonder Woman, Green Arrow and Black Canary and Aquaman and maybe Martian Manhunter (though that could be difficult). Despite them not wanting to go down the same road as Marvel, I still think Warner and DC should do crossovers and eve... Read More
