Zachary Levi sounds off on Shazam! Fury of the Gods

Before The Flash became 2023’s biggest box office bomb, there was another DC superhero movie in the hot seat of shame: Shazam! Fury of the Gods. Its lead star, Zachary Levi, spoke recently on the film’s failures.

Appearing on the FilmUp Podcast, Levi said, “I don’t know what the future holds for it all because, unfortunately, the second movie was not as well received. The audience score is still quite good, but the critics’ score was very oddly and perplexingly low, and people were insanely unkind.”

Released back in March 2023, Shazam! Fury of the Gods has a Rotten Tomatoes score of just 49% from critics. This is a marked contrast to the 2019 original, which got a critic score of 90%.

You could make the case that the audience score didn’t dip much (86% for the sequel, 82% for the original), but it didn’t translate to box office glory, the film grossing a worldwide total of just $133.8 off a $125 million budget. That makes it one of the worst box office openings for a major Hollywood superhero film, with just $30.5 million generated domestically.

Levi's Shazam! Fury of the Gods co-star is already bouncing back: Helen Mirren transforms in the Golda trailer.

Levi suggested increased levels of online toxicity as a reason for the film underperforming, saying: “I think even just the world, from the first movie to the second movie, the world has shifted so much. Social media has shifted so much. Hate, online hate and haters and trolls, and factions and all that has just gotten more galvanized in its toxicity. I think there are people who genuinely, unfortunately, want to destroy certain projects because they don’t like them, or they don’t like me, or they don’t like other people involved in them or whatever.”

Decide for yourself by watching Shazam! Fury of the Gods, which is now streaming on Max.