Shazam! Fury of the Gods tanked over the weekend with a pathetic $30 million domestic take and only another $35 million overseas.
The film’s star, Zachary Levi, is blaming the marketing.
To a point, I agree. Once Shazam! Fury of the Gods began catering to America’s woketards with the promise that one of Shazam’s sidekicks would come out as gay, it undoubtedly hurt the box office. People are beyond tired of this nonsense, most especially parents.
Nevertheless, even if Levi believed that that was the cause, he couldn’t say it and remain employable. In fact, Levi laughably described Shazam! Fury of the Gods as a family movie: [emphasis added]:
In a fan Q&A, Levi wrote that the “biggest issue” with Fury of the Gods was “marketing.” He also said that while he’s not blaming the box office on Zack Snyder fans, he acknowledged that there is a particularly vocal cadre of Snyder devotees online who eagerly root for any other DC project to fail.
One Shazam fan tweeted, “There is no denying that at the moment there are many Snyder fans who are happy for the failure of your film and many of them wish that everything that is to come fails just for not continuing with the films of their director.”
“This is also true,” Levi wrote in response. “Sad, but true. How much that actually affects the box office is anyone’s guess. But I think the biggest issue we’re having is marketing. This is a perfect family movie, and yet a lot of families aren’t aware of that. Which is just a shame.”
Except Shazam! Fury of the Gods did not advertise itself as a family movie—quite the opposite. The moment families hear that a movie contains adult sexuality in the form of homosexuality, they know it is not a movie for kids. No sane parent wants to 1) undermine their child’s innocence prematurely or 2) have to explain alternate sexual lifestyles to a little kid on the way home from the movies.
What’s more, I’ve read multiple reports that peg the promotion budget for Shazam 2 at $100 million, which is the amount spent on the first Shazam!, which opened to $53 million.
So what changed between parts one and two?
On top of introducing homosexuality to this “family film,” there is superhero fatigue and Shazam 2’s lackluster reviews.
This self-destructive denial in Hollywood is really something to watch. Disney’s open embrace of grooming, of sexualizing little kids, has killed its family film division. Likewise, the literal and figurative left-wing rhetoric in its Star Wars movies killed that franchise and is now wounding Marvel.
Content is everything, and this woke/gay content is exhausting audiences who just want to get back to being entertained and watching characters they can relate to—ask Top Gun: Maverick about that.
But even as the movie industry circles the drain and the streaming industry stalls, no one will admit that the content is the problem. Instead, it’s everything else but never ever the actual product.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.