After Shazam! Fury of the Gods, David F. Sandberg wanted to stop directing “IP-based movies.”
Sanberg helmed the original Shazam! film in 2019 and its corresponding sequel in 2023. However, after a disappointing box office run and much criticism from the second DC installment, Sandberg said in a Tuesday interview with GamesRadar+ that he was ready to write off the subgenre of film for good.
“I mean, to be honest, fans can get very, very crazy and very angry with you,” he said. “You can get death threats and everything so after Shazam! 2, I was like, ‘I never wanna do another IP-based movie because it’s just not worth it.’”
After the Shazam! backlash, Sandberg told The Hollywood Reporter he was ready to move on from the superhero niche. “I started my Shazam journey right after Annabelle: Creation in 2017, and so it’s been quite a few years of just Shazam,” he said two years ago.
“So I’m very ready to move on and go back to horror and just try some other things,” he added, which is what he did with his new film Until Dawn, adapted from the 2015 survival game of the same name. His perspective on directing IP-based projects shifted once he was “sent [the Until Dawn] script, and I was like, ‘Ah, this would be so much fun to do.’”
The Lights Out director told THR that Until Dawn was “more complicated” to make than both of the Shazam! movies, but that it ultimately was “a dream come true” to work on.
“It was very hard to make this movie, and it was a very ambitious movie for the time and the money we had,” he shared. “But I was so eager to do horror again, and this was a dream come true in that I got to do lots of full-on R-rated kills and gore and special effects and special makeup and monsters. I’ve been wanting to do all of these things since I was a little kid. So that was very welcomed, but it was a challenge.”
Until Dawn hits theaters on Friday.
