In some good news for Shazam! and itsbox office prospects, Deadline is reporting that Warner Bros. has managed to secure a day-and-date release for the DC superhero action-comedy in China.
As the site notes, April 5th is the beginning of the Qingming Festival, a lucrative time for the box office, as Warner Bros. discovered last year with Ready Player One, which opened to $61.7 million in the Middle Kingdom.
Meanwhile, fans in the U.S. will be able to catch the next instalment in the DC Extended Universe a little earlier, as Fandango has announced that it will be holding exclusive advanced screenings of Shazam! on March 23rd.
Based on early critical reactions – including Flickering Myth’s Rob Kojder who calls it “by far the best film in the DCEU” – one would have to assume that word of mouth coming out of these early screenings could do wonders for Shazam!’s opening weekend.
SEE ALSO: Shazam! gets an international trailer packed with new footage
We all have a superhero inside us, it just takes a bit of magic to bring it out. In Billy Batson’s (Asher Angel) case, by shouting out one word—SHAZAM!—this streetwise 14-year-old foster kid can turn into the adult Super Hero Shazam (Zachary 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 (Mark Strong).
Shazam will see Zachary Levi starring as the titular superhero, with Asher Angel as his young alter-ego Billy Batson, Jack Dylan Grazer as Freddy Freeman, Ian Chen as Eugene Choi, Jovan Armand as Pedro Peña, Grace Fulton as Mary Marvel, Cooper Andrews as Victor Vasquez, Faithe Herman as Darla Dudley, Mark Strong as Dr. Thaddeus Sivana, Djimon Hounsou as the Wizard, Adam Brody as Freddie Freeman, Ross Butler as Eugene Choi, D. J. Cotrona as Pedro Pena, Meagan Good as Darla Dudley, and Michelle Borth as Mary Bromfield. The film is set for release on April 5th 2019.
