Shazam: Fury Of The Gods director and co-star on critical response

Director David F Sandberg and co-star Rachel Ziegler have been posted about the response to Shazam! Fury Of The Gods… It’s not been the best of weeks in the world of superhero series Shazam. Following the success of the first movie, director David F Sandberg returned for Shazam: Fury Of The Gods. Zachary Levi is back in the title role, with Rachel Ziegler one of the new additions to the ensemble. Thing is, it didn’t quite go to plan this time around. Whilst the film didn’t exactly take a critical drubbing, it nonetheless didn’t get the warm reception of the original. And then, over the weekend, the box office drop off from the first movie was pretty brutal too. A $30m US opening weekend might not look too bad on paper, but when the original did over $50m on its way to $366m worldwide, the runes aren’t looking good. The film still has a fair amount of fans though, and two of the creative forces involved have popped onto social media to respond to some of the criticism. Sandberg for one, who’s noted the disparity between the audience and critical response to the movie. A fair, measured Tweet, this one… <blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>On Rotten Tomatoes I just got my lowest critic score and my highest audience score on the same film 🤷‍♂️ I wasn’t expecting a repeat of the first movie critically but I was still a little surprised because I think it’s a good film. Oh well. — David F. Sandberg (@ponysmasher) March 20, 2023 He followed it up by confirming he’s heading back to horror movies next, and saying “One thing I’ve really been looking forward to is disconnecting from the superhero discourse online. A lot of that stresses me out so much and it will be nice not having to think about that anymore”. Hard to argue with the man on that one. Rachel Ziegler too has posted in support of the film, and in her words…

some people out there and just being… senselessly mean. and it’s unnecessary. and i know, i know, “if you can’t handle the heat…” and all that nonsense, and you’re right. but our film is actually very good. it’s just cool to hate on fun nowadays. that’s okay. we’re good. ❤️

— rachel zegler (she/her/hers) (@rachelzegler) March 19, 2023

I like these responses. Defending their film, without punching anyone else down too. Shazam! Fury Of The Gods is in cinemas now. — Thank you for visiting! If you’d like to support our attempts to make a non-clickbaity movie website: Follow Film Stories on Twitter here, and on Facebook here. Buy our Film Stories and Film Junior print magazines here. Become a Patron here.