The closing moments of David F. Sandberg's Shazam! saw Billy Batson transformed into his magically-powered alter ego to keep a lunch date with his foster brother Freddy Freeman. He didn't come alone, though, as the Man of Steel accompanied Batson for a surprise cameo. Unfortunately, Henry Cavill didn't reprise his role, and executive producer Peter Safran confirmed that scheduling conflicts prevented him from doing so.
That's an interesting statement, as previous reports indicated that it was salary negotiations that resulted in Cavill and his team declining to appear.
"At one point, we'd hoped it was going to be Cavill doing it, but unfortunately his schedule didn't allow him to do it," Safran stated. He continued, "We still wanted to do it anyway, and it turned out to be better, because it let us do a hard cut on Freddy's reaction, because if we had Cavill there, we'd actually written lines, they had a dialogue, but then it's a little bit of a hat on hat, because really what it's about is Freddy's reaction, so we got to get out on that."
Speaking about another cameo, Safran touched on whether that was specifically Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's Black Adams that appeared in the magical illusion created by Djimon Hounsou's Wizard.
"Clearly, we don't say that it's a tease of Black Adam, but a perceptive individual like yourself might make the argument that that was, in fact, Black Adam that the wizard was referring to. I think, again, it's just something for the fans, people that know a lot about the history of Shazam!. It's a fun thing to think about. For those that don't, it's just part of the origin story. It's just learning the history of the wizard and his brothers and sisters who are protecting the realms."