Dwayne Johnson’s Black Adam movie is released as another addition to DCEU and has been receiving mixed reviews around the world.
But we are here going to talk about something entirely fascinating revealed by the movie producers in their conversation with Collider.
Steven Weintraub from Collider took the interview of Black Adam producers Beau Flynn and Hiram Garcia.
As per the producers, it is to know that there is a longer version of the movie that they had to cut down to make it for theatrical release.
Producers shared that earlier they had a longer movie including various subplots but later they decided to focus more on the titular character, ie. Black Adams.
So, definitely various Justice Society of America characters might have gotten smaller scenes or removed to make the runtime of 124 minutes for the theatrical release.
Here’s what exactly Flynn tells the interviewer regarding the deleted scenes of the movie :
“One of the great challenges to make a movie with Black Adam and the Justice Society and really launching them…it was very tricky particularly in the edit. Because we shot a lot of footage to figure out the balance between really giving the audience a kind of backstory on the Justice side and not assuming that they know all these characters, of course you know Hawkman and his mythology, but a lot of people don’t. Same thing with Fate. And we have some incredible scenes between Smasher and Cyclone and some of our favorite scenes in the movie are Hawkman and Dr. Fate. But there are a good handful of scenes that we did have to cut just to make sure we were servicing Black Adam.”
So in order to keep the movies around two hours still deliver the action-packed duels and fights that they promised to fans.
According to Flynn, they wanted to keep the audience put on a thrill ride right from people sitting down in theatres to the post-credit scene.
They also talked about those scenes that weren’t finalized and were assured to not work heavily on VFX, so even if they have to delete them later, the least money will be wasted.
In Garcia’s words :
“You want to get a lot of those cuts and everything tightened up before you’re starting to get into the full flow of VFX. That’s just being responsible with filmmaking and making sure that we’re always utilizing all of our money the best way. So a lot of those cuts were done before visual effects were done.”
Flynn later shared that there were two or three scenes that were close to completion but weren’t included in the theatrical release.
He also talked about how there was no last-minute heavy VFX work. They only start putting the footage on VFX houses only if they previewed it to their audience and are sure about it.
Flynn basically pointed out the dynamics between the VFX houses and the production companies. He shared how it is a lot about time, and less about money.
Here’s what Flynn quoted sharing how VFX houses are ready to turn down millions of dollars just because they are not sure of delivering it on time :
“The last minute I would say there were probably two or three scenes that were close to completion. That was it. We try and preview our movies up early to the audience so we can be responsible and not start turning sequences over to visual effects houses. Because not only is it money, but it’s time. And all of these top VFX companies, their bandwidth is crazy. They will turn down millions of dollars because they’ll say we just don’t have the artists or we just don’t have the ability to land this for you in time. Which we appreciate the honesty, but at the same time is we still had a release date to make.”
Black Adam is going to be an important character in the DCEU and it will be interesting to see his interactions with other DCEU superheroes.
Also, there is definitely a Black Adam and Superman clash we are going to see sometime in the future and the makers hinted towards this ultimate battle as well.
For now, this new addition brought a lot of new faces into DCEU. If you count the JSA, that alone is four new superheroes established in this DC cinematic universe.
Apart from Dwayne Johnson, the movie features Pierce Brosnan as Doctor Fate, Aldis Hodge as Hawkman, Quintessa Swindell as Cyclone, and Noah Centineo as Atom Smasher bringing together the four primary JSA members as well.
News Source: Collider Featured Image Source: DCEU Wiki Fandom