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Zachary Levi Says He Once Wanted to Play Deadpool

September 8, 2019 | Posted by Jeremy Thomas
Shazam Deapool

Zachary Levi is rocking some superhero cred as Shazam!, but he originally had a different hero in mind: Deadpool. Speaking at FAN EXPO Boston (per ComicBook.com), Levi said that back before Ryan Reynolds brought the character to life, he wanted to play Marvel’s Merc with a Mouth.

“I wanted to be Deadpool for so long,” Levi said. “Like a long, long [time ago]. When I was reading Deadpool I wanted to be Deadpool, but Ryan is crushing that. They’ve done so well with creating that.”

He went on to say that he sees a lot between Shazam! and the Deadpool films. “I actually kind of think that Deadpool and Shazam! are similar movies in that we’re both satellites of a greater universe that we get to kind of look at and point at and realize as an audience we can all do that together,” Levi said. “Deadpool got to take all those potshots at the Marvel universe [laughs], particularly the X-Men franchise, and it was so genius. And that we get to be on the outside, existing within the DC Universe but not necessarily having to subscribe to everything that’s already there.”

Levi also said he’s “so happy” playing the DC hero, noting, “I was a demigod [Fandral in the Thor films] at one point, but I was in somebody else’s movies. Then I got my own movie and I got to wear a cape and put the spandex on. Also I got to be, in my very unbiased opinion, kind of the coolest of all of them. I mean, not cool as like Batman cool, but I get to have fun. All those guys are moping around, ‘Gotta save the universe again.’ I’m like, [enthusiastically] ‘Come on!’ That’s fun, you know?”

Levi also said he’s happy he’s playing a character in a younger-skewing film: “Doing a superhero movie that an entire family can watch together and everyone gets something from, we need more of that, we need that. Chuck was like that, I feel like Chuck was a show families could watch together, Tangled is a movie that families can watch together … Some stuff is not gonna be kid accessible and that’s totally cool, but if you can do it… and in our movie, that’s what it was,” Levi said. “I mean, I was a 14-year-old boy, like in real life, which is why I got the job.”