David F. Sandberg didn’t want to do another IP-based movie due to getting death threats after Shazam! Fury of the Gods

After the release of Shazam! Fury of the Gods, director David F. Sandberg was ready to swear off any further IP-based projects, telling GamesRadar+ that he actually received death threats from fans over the movie.

“I mean, to be honest, fans can get very, very crazy and very angry with you,” Sandberg said. “You can get, like, 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.’” The director was prepared to follow until he was sent the script for Until Dawn. “I was like, ‘Ah, this would be so much fun to do, to do all these kinds of horrors? I kind of have to do it, and hope that the people see what we’re trying to do and like it,’” he said. “I really thought it was brilliant of the writers to come up with this time loop idea where the night starts over because then you do kind of get that feel of the game, when you’re replaying it and making different choices. I think it’s very much in the spirit of the game.“

It’s safe to say that Shazam! Fury of the Gods was not well received. The film grossed just $134 million worldwide, making it a box-office bomb. Reviews were mixed, with many saying the sequel was inferior to its predecessor. That said, death threats are never the answer.

Sandberg’s latest film, Until Dawn, is an adaptation of the 2015 video game developed by Supermassive Games and published by Sony Computer Entertainment. “One year after her sister Melanie mysteriously disappeared, Clover and her friends head into the remote valley where she vanished in search of answers,” reads the official synopsis. “They find themselves horrifically murdered, only to wake up and find themselves back at the beginning. Trapped in an endless time loop, they’re forced to relive the nightmare again – only each time, the killer is different, each more terrifying than the last, and the only way to escape is to survive until dawn.“

Until Dawn is now playing in theaters, but our own Tyler Nichols was mixed on the film. “Overall, I didn’t hate my time with Until Dawn, I just found it was an all-too-familiar journey,” he wrote in his review. “One moment it felt like they were picking apart tropes and the genre, and the other times it felt like it was perfectly in line and stereotypical. If you’re going to break down the genre, then you need characters and story beats that actually subvert the norm.” You can check out the rest of his review right here.

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