Shazam! Fury of the Gods director David F. Sandberg shared a video to his Twitter feed explaining how he trolled his followers with one simple question.
"Earlier I tweeted a link to an image and I asked people if they could identify what movie it was from," Sandberg explained. "I got a lot of different answers because as some of you figured out, it was foul play. I changed the htaccess file on my web server so that if you try to go to that image address you actually go to a php script which looks at your IP address, and depending on what numbers you have in your address, you'll see one out of five different images."
"I actually created [an address reading https://freak-film.com/img/assaultrifle.jpg] as well because for a brief moment I was like hey, I should post this to, like, a gun forum and then ask people 'hey, does anyone know what gun this is?' then they would all get different images and chaos would ensue," Sandberg continued. "But then I realized I probably shouldn't mess with people who own lots of guns— I'll just mess with my followers instead. So thank you to everyone who guessed what movie it was. You were all correct. And wrong."
This is not the first time Sandberg has trolled his followers. Last month, a fan tweeted him asking for an update on the sequel to Shazam!, and the director responded with a fake title card reading, "Shazam! Now the Kids Have Facial Hair." Prior to that, Sandberg dropped a joke trailer for Shazam! Fury of the Gods complete with fake reviews.
Though Shazam! Fury of the Gods has not yet began filming due to coronavirus, it is expected to start shooting in the first quarter of 2021, according to star Zachary Levi. As a result, the release of the film was moved from April on 2022 to November of the same year. It was originally supposed to be filmed simultaneously with Shazam! spinoff Black Adam, which is also expected to begin shooting in early 2021.
Directed by David F. Sandberg, Shazam!: Fury of the Gods stars Zachary Levi as Shazam, Jack Dylan Grazer as Freddy Freeman, Asher Angel as Billy Batson and Marta Milans as Mama Rosa. The film is tentatively set to arrive in theaters on Nov. 4, 2022.