Lucy Liu to Play a Villain in ‘Shazam!’ Sequel
Shazam! turned out to be a sleeper hit for the DC Extended Universe when it dropped in 2019, earning a high Cinemascore and top ratings from Rotten Tomatoes.
Zachary Levi starred as the titular DC Comics hero who battled Sivana over the Eye of Sin. While updates for DC’s upcoming Black Adam movie have been feeding the fandom lately, it’s been a minute since anyone’s heard anything about Shazam! 2 — until now.
Lucy Liu was just cast in the superhero sequel.
Lucy Liu cast as villain in ‘Shazam!: Fury of the Gods’
Just when young Billy Batson thought he had time to rest and enjoy his family, more trouble is on the way. According to Deadline, Lucy Liu has been tapped to play Kalypso, sister of Helen Mirren’s Hespera.
Both characters are daughters of the mythological Titan Atlas, which means their powers have something in common with Shazam.
Atlas is one of the beings whose powers were imbued to Shazam, and in comic book lore, he’s had a few run-ins with the hero. Though Atlas typically minds his business because he’s busy holding up planet Earth, a version of “bad Shazam” once attacked him and beat him down.
Hespera is a character that doesn’t exist in the comics, but in mythology, there’s a deity with a similar name who was a guardian of Hera’s golden apples.
Little is known about Kalypso except for one storyline where Atlas wanted to attend her wedding. He asked Superman to stand in for him as Earth’s pillar, and the Man of Steel helped out.
It will be interesting to see where Kalypso and Hespera take things with Shazam as a villainous tag team. Might they have something to do with the caterpillar that spoke to Sivana at the end of part 1? Time will tell.
‘Shazam! 2’ is slated for a 2023 release
Levi and the majority of the original Shazam! cast are set to reprise their roles for the sequel. During the DC FanDome panel that happened in summer 2020, the cast and crew played coy about the next installment, and only spoke about the film for roughly five minutes.
The movie is due to arrive in summer 2023 with Sinbad in a mysterious role. His participation was announced during FanDome, but director David Sandberg would not elaborate how he fits into the plot.
These details are not stopping fans from theorizing that a few other DC characters could show up —including the all-powerful Black Adam.
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson recently began production on the movie. And that’s one character who happens to be one of Shazam’s adversaries. He’s battled Billy Batson in the comics, and the two have a long history of being enemies/frenemies.
Could he make an appearance? He and a Justice League superhero or two may surprise fans in Shazam!, but it’s being kept under wraps. Black Adam is due to arrive in theaters in July 2022, almost one year before the Shazam! sequel.
Liu’s latest projects include Elementary, Why Women Kill, and Stage Mother. Fans can currently stream Shazam! on Amazon Prime, Apple TV or YouTube.
