Shazam! spoilers! Read at your own risk since there is Wrath of the Gods ahead.
A sizable portion of fans seem to have enjoyed Shazam! Fury of the Gods despite it not being the box office success Warner Bros. had hoped for. The movie did have some cool moments, with the final scene perhaps being the most well-liked by the audience. Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman appears in the sequel’s climactic scenes (which was spoiled by TV spots before the release). Although the scene appears to have gone over very well, there have been suspicions that Gadot was a deepfake during that scene. Currently, filmmaker David F.On that front, Sandberg is putting the record straight.
It goes without saying that COVID has made the making of movies and television shows extremely difficult, particularly for high-budget productions. In all honesty, actor availability might make blockbuster shootings difficult even before the pandemic. These details, along with the always improving (and occasionally annoying) deepfake technology, are sufficient to raise the question of whether facial magic played a role in Gal Gadot’s return to the DC Extended Universe. Recently, a fan posted images of actress Taylor Cahill dressed as the Amazonian warrior on Twitter, which appears to have sparked the deepfake accusations. Yet Cahill had another function, as David F. Sandberg clarified in his own tweet:
Shazam! Grace, a Wrath of the Gods star CinemaBlend received confirmation from Caroline Currey that the actors did not actually film that cameo with Gal Gadot. The actress claims that Gadot’s attendance with the rest of the group was just impossible due to scheduling conflicts. This latest behind-the-scenes information demonstrates that the director was still proactive in planning out coverage by using Taylor Cahill as a point of reference. It would also appear that Billy Batson’s romantically humorous dream sequence saw Cahill’s figure merging with Djimon Hounsou’s Wizard. In conclusion, viewers did glimpse the genuine Gadot.
Since the movie’s debut, David F. Sandberg has revealed a lot of intriguing insights. He revealed a rather interesting piece of information about the Diana Prince sequence in which Billy Batson is revived by a Justice Leaguer. Sadly, he faced immigration problems and had to film the cameo in England. Sandberg had to oversee the major scene from a distance, and the following social media post shows how he accomplished it:
Because of a visa issue, I was unable to travel to England to direct a specific cameo in #ShazamFuryOfTheGods, so I did it remotely. Contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t a deepfake. Twitter image from March 22, 2023: p8ODDHWe9Q
The Shazam! franchise’s future is uncertain given its box office success and DC’s shifting cinematic landscape. Yet at the very least, it would seem that David F. Sandberg and company went above and beyond to appease the fans. In doing so, he may have offered them Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman in one of her final appearances on a major motion picture set.
Shazam! While Wonder Woman and several other DCEU films are already accessible to stream via an HBO Max subscription, Fury of the Gods is currently playing in theaters.
