For months Dwayne Johnson has been telling us that Black Adam is coming to “change the hierarchy” of the DCEU. While we are still not really sure what this entails, it looks like the film’s director has decided that they will take over the baton for a while and have been bigging up the mighty anti-hero’s upcoming big screen debut, which arrives in the summer. Black Adam was originally planned to make his first appearance in 2019’s Shazam!, but that didn’t happen and now, after numerous delays and many years, one of the most powerful characters in DC’s comic book history is, according to director Jaume Collet-Serra, coming to “disrupt” the superhero genre.

Black Adam’s origin story tells of an Egyptian slave who is granted phenomenal powers by the wizard Shazam. While he is initially filled with good intentions, his desire for power leads him down a dark path, which sets him as the nemesis of superhero Shazam and creates an all powerful anti-hero in DC’s ranks. The film is expected to have a dark tone, and considering Johnson has already teased that the body count in the movie is going to push boundaries, it’s likely that Black Adam will deal with both the character’s historical origin and how he then ends up causing large amounts of carnage in the modern day.

Speaking with Total Film, Collet-Serra explained how Black Adam is going to be unlike anything people have seen, which in itself is a big claim these days when superheroes come in all shapes and sizes. The director said:

"Black Adam is a disruptor in the DC Comics world, and it has to be a disruptor in the way that we make a superhero movie ... I like to be challenged, and I wanted to create new technology, so we developed the way that [Adam] moves, the way that he flies, his costume. And then it trickled down to every other character and the movie itself. But there was always the goal – to be new and unique in the storytelling and in every aspect of it."

Dwayne Johnson has been frequently sharing behind the scenes images, videos and chatter on his Instagram account, but the line that he is coming to “change the hierarchy of the DC Universe” is one that he has proudly been announcing wherever possible. From what has been shared so far, the film is set to change the way superhero powers are shown in movies and on TV, with technology being pushed to its limit to make Black Adam a different breed of superhero movie to what has previously been possible.

Filming on Black Adam concluded in July, and as well as introducing its title character, the film will also bring the Justice Society of America into play in the DCEU, with Pierce Brosnan (Doctor Fate), Aldis Hodge (Hawkman), Noah Centineo (Atom Smasher), and Quintessa Swindell (Cyclone) making up the group. We have already been given our first look at the movie through footage released at DC FanDome, and there is no doubt we will be hearing more from Johnson and co on the movie before it arrives on July 29th, 2022. This news comes via Games Radar.