Black Adam and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness might seem like superhero chalk and cheese at first glance. Black Adam, of course, is DC and Dwayne Johnson’s attempt to launch a new anti-hero into the stratosphere, while the Sam Raimi-directed Doctor Strange sequel leaned heavily on horror tropes as it travelled through the mind-bending multiverse.
Producer Beau Flynn, though, tells SFX magazine in the latest issue, featuring Halloween on the cover, that there’s a "little bit" of crossover with the two superhero movies – because of the twisted superhero vs. superhero premise. In Multiverse of Madness, Scarlet Witch became corrupted by grief over Vision and her lost ‘children’ before Benedict Cumberbatch’s one-time Sorcerer Supreme intervened. In Black Adam, Kahndaq’s antihero wreaks havoc which forces the Justice Society of America, including Pierce Brosnan’s Doctor Fate, to come calling.
"We were like, ‘Who has even a remote chance of stopping Black Adam?’. We knew it had to be some formidable superhero, and that’s when we said, ‘Why don’t we just relaunch the Justice Society?’ That gave us an opportunity to tell the origin story of basically five new characters, and we hope to be able to continue with those characters in the future." Flynn said of the heroic group, which counts Hawkman (Aldis Hodge), Atom Smasher (Noah Centineo), and Cyclone (Quintessa Swintell) among its members.
Flynn continues, "I think it’s a really interesting set-up to see the Justice Society have to come together in order to kind of try and stop Black Adam. There is a little bit of that in Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness because of Scarlet Witch, but I just think it’s such an interesting call to action to see the Justice Society have to assemble – they haven’t been together in a while, and they have to try and apprehend one of the most powerful superheroes in the world."
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Black Adam, starring Dwayne Johnson, Aldis Hodge, Noah Centineo, and Sarah Shahi, is set for release on October 21. For more on the movie, be sure to check out the Halloween Ends issue of SFX Magazine, available on newsstands from Wednesday, October 5. And be sure to sign up to the newsletter, sending all the latest exclusives straight to your inbox.
