Warner Bros. reportedly recognized its mistake with the marketing for Shazam! Fury of the Gods, noting its Wonder Woman blunder to director David F. Sandberg.
Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman has been an increasingly hot topic over the last few weeks, which goes far beyond the hope that she'll be back for more DCU action even after Wonder Woman 3 was canceled.
As it pertains to Shazam 2, chatter has been prevalent online due to Warner Bros. spoiling Gadot's cameo in the movie, with the actress first showing up in the marketing campaign as early as six weeks before the sequel released.
And with DC fans already upset about how much Warner Bros. spoiled in trailers before this moment, this pushed many over the edge ahead of the DCU's latest release.
Shazam 2 Director Got Apology From Warner Bros.
Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, Shazam! Fury of the Gods director David F. Sandberg reflected on the conversations he had with Warner Bros. after seeing Wonder Woman's appearance in the film spoiled through marketing.
Sandberg explained that he didn't know about Wonder Woman being used in the movie's marketing campaign, but he also noted that the studio apologized to him for "not keeping [him] in the loop:"
"I was surprised. (Laughs.) I was just getting back from the press tour, and I got a text, asking, 'Hey, why spoil Wonder Woman?' And I was like, 'What are you talking about?' So I didn’t know, and they did apologize for not keeping me in the loop. But I understand why they did it, because they wanted to get people to see the movie. So, of course, I understand, but it’s a shame because these days, the only audiences who get to see these movies as intended are test audiences."
He also looked back on how they were in the dark about who Rachel Zegler was playing in the movie, calling it "a twist that worked" for the executives and the audience when she was revealed to be a goddess:
"When they saw the movie, they didn’t know Rachel Zegler’s character was a goddess, for example. For them, it was actually a twist that worked, but then, once marketing started, you have to show her in her goddess clothes and that whole thing is out of the bag. So no one is really going to be surprised that she’s a goddess undercover in a school."
Zegler's identity was something that Sandberg actually wanted to keep a secret, although he realized it "was just going to be impossible" to do so once trailers began coming out:
"Yeah, that was always the intention with the movie, but as soon as they started working on the marketing, it was just going to be impossible to keep it secret, unfortunately."
But he also explained that he's a person that enjoys "knowing as little about a movie as possible" before seeing it, straying away from the leakers and scoopers that seek out information about movies like his:
"But a lot of people actually enjoy spoilers. There’s so many prolific leakers and scoopers on Twitter who have so many followers, and they really want to know every detail about DC and Marvel movies before they see them. If that’s your thing, that’s your thing, but I really enjoy knowing as little about a movie as possible. I just saw 'The Menu' recently, and I thought it was going to be a cannibal movie. So I had no idea what it really was going into it."
Will Warner Bros. Learn From Spoiling Shazam 2?
Warning - The rest of this article contains spoilers for Shazam! Fury of the Gods.
Even though Gal Gadot only showed up for the final scene of Shazam 2, bringing Billy Batson back to life after his sacrifice, it's astounding that Warner Bros. spoiled such a huge cameo weeks before the movie even came out.
Fans heard about a version of Gal Gadot's heroine appearing in some kind of dream sequence for Billy over the past couple of years, but seeing her huge moment spoiler had fans up in arms about what the studio was willing to put into the marketing campaign.
The big question now is how Warner Bros. will learn from this mistake, especially with the final handful of movies on the way before James Gunn's Chapter 1: Gods and Monsters slate starts.
The Flash and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom have already seen minor spoilers come out to the public, whether it was through a marketing campaign or the highly-publicized Amber Heard defamation trial.
There have even been rumors about Wonder Woman showing up yet again in both The Flash and Aquaman 2, although the specifics about her inclusion in those movies haven't been definitively spoiled just yet.
Hopefully, Warner Bros. will take what happened in this instance and work out better strategies for its upcoming promo tours, especially considering a couple of their DC movies already have outside issues to deal with as well.
Shazam! Fury of the Gods is now playing in theaters.
