Professional bad guy Mark Strong promises DC's Shazam! will bring the laughs

Few people do villainy as well as Mark Strong, who you'll instantly recognize from Kick-Ass, Kingsman: The Secret Service, and Stardust. So it's good to know he'll be giving us full bad guy in DC's Shazam! movie, currently in production. In an interview with Total Film, Strong revealed that this particular DC outing has a lighter side. 

"Zachary Levi, who plays the lead [Shazam, the superhero alter ego of Billy Batson], is a very funny guy, and I’ve no doubt he will play with that part and make it interesting," he says. "I think DC have realized that they’ve got their canon of films that are dark, and they’ve now found one that’s pretty funny! There are some really funny moments in it."

Of course, this isn't Strong's first dip in the DC pool. Back in 2001, he starred in Green Lantern with Ryan Reynolds, playing the fallen Green Lantern Corps member Sinestro. Sadly, the movie flopped.

"Sinestro was meant to go evil in the second one," explains Strong. "The final frame of the first film is him trying on the yellow ring and his whole costume going yellow, and that was when he went evil. So I was really looking forward to that. The film didn’t do as well as they expected… so it never got made. So I was definitely conscious that Sivana is almost like the next stage that I wasn’t able to take."

You can read the full interview and much much more in the latest issue of Total Film, on sale now. 

Shazam! is currently slated for release on April 5, 2019. 

(Image credit: Total Film)

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Rachel Weber
Managing Editor, US

Rachel Weber is the US Managing Editor of GamesRadar+ and lives in Brooklyn, New York. She joined GamesRadar+ in 2017, revitalizing the news coverage and building new processes and strategies for the US team.