Whenever a new superhero movie goes in to production fans are left clamouring for news on costumes. Even now with Birds of Prey having just started filming fans cannot wait to see how their favourite heroes costumes are going to translate to the big screen.
For costume designer Leah Butler, Shazam! was her chance to take a costume (almost) never before seen in live-action and translate it to the big screen. As part of Total Film’s cover story on the DC movie Butler has been discussing building the suit for Zachary Levi.
“It took 16 weeks to build the costume,” Butler said. “We had to scan [Zachary Levi’s] body and start building the costume even before he started his very strict regime – his diet and working out… Each suit costs, oh boy, upwards of a million? We have ten suits.”
“The exterior suit is a spandex suit that goes over a musculature suit, and each muscle has been sculpted on the body of Zach so it accents and highlights his shape and size,” she said. “There is actually a battery in the back – we luckily had a cape to cover it all up or I don’t know where we would have put all that stuff – and it is remotely lit through a switchboard operator. There is wiring throughout the costume. It’s a 26-volt AA rechargeable battery. It lasts about two hours at full charge.”
The second trailer for Shazam! is due to drop by the end of this month. In the meantime here’s a reminder of the movies first trailer.
You can also find all our coverage of the movie over at our Shazam! hub.
We all have a superhero inside us, it just takes a bit of magic to bring it out. In Billy Batson’s (Angel) case, by shouting out one word—SHAZAM!—this streetwise 14-year-old foster kid can turn into the adult Super Hero Shazam (Levi), courtesy of an ancient wizard.Still a kid at heart—inside a ripped, godlike body—Shazam revels in this adult version of himself by doing what any teen would do with superpowers: have fun with them! Can he fly? Does he have X-ray vision? Can he shoot lightning out of his hands? Can he skip his social studies test? Shazam sets out to test the limits of his abilities with the joyful recklessness of a child. But he’ll need to master these powers quickly in order to fight the deadly forces of evil controlled by Dr. Thaddeus Sivana (Strong).
Shazam! also stars Jack Dylan Grazer (“IT”) as Billy’s best friend and ultimate superhero enthusiast, Freddy, part of the foster family that includes Mary, played by Grace Fulton (“Annabelle: Creation”); Darla, played by Faithe Herman (TV’s “This is Us”); Eugene, played by Ian Chen (TV’s “Fresh Off the Boat”); and Pedro, played by Jovan Armand (TV’s “Hawaii Five-O”). Cooper Andrews (TV’s “The Walking Dead”) and Marta Milans (TV’s “Killer Women”) play foster parents Victor and Rosa Vasquez, with Ron Cephas Jones (“This is Us”) as the Wizard.
Christopher Godsick, Jeffrey Chernov, Dwayne Johnson, Dany Garcia and Hiram Garcia are serving as executive producers.
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