Here come the tomatoes! Zachary Levi is getting more attention for his personal views and social media activity ever since he endorsed Donald Trump. Going back a little bit further, he also opened up about his beliefs and skepticism of pharmaceutical companies.
It’s a tad coincidental, and convenient, then that a report is inverting the narrative and placing the onus for any bad publicity onto him. Moreover, the report does this by running with the word of an anonymous source seeking to reopen the aging, if not old, wound of the Shazam! franchise’s failure.
Per The Hollywood Reporter, an insider they say knows the actor is calling him “bitter” about the way his career turned out. The DC hero who started at Fawcett was supposed to be Levi’s big break, but after Fury of the Gods, it was clear that dream was a fantasy.
“When he was cast as Shazam, it was literally his dream,” this source said. “He thought this was his ticket to being The Rock or Chris Evans. But it didn’t happen for him, and he’s bitter about that.”
THR also points out Levi’s lean into family friendly and faith based cinema, saying his move along with the endorsement of Trump is more of a calculated pivot than career suicide.
There might be grains of truth to this story, but the timing gives it the air of a smear piece. Why else would they bring any of this up if not as a reaction to the increased transparency in his political views? No less on the word of an unnamed source?
What is true is that Levi’s career has been in a slump since Shazam: Fury of the Gods flopped, but it’s not his fault. Despite reporting of his old social media posts and accounts he followed, his career was thrown off by a trajectory out of his control.
Dwayne Johnson’s designs for Black Adam kept him and his counterpart separated irrespective of their connection. However, The Rock’s gamble was a loaded crapshoot. DCEU box office receipts kept diminishing and James Gunn swooped in to reset everything before the Snyderverse wrapped up.
To tell the truth, Levi never really had a chance to be a major player with DC Studios.