'Black Adam' Cast Adds 'The Invisible Man' Star Aldis Hodge As Hawkman

Black Adam has found its Hawkman: Aldis Hodge, seen earlier this year in The Invisible Man and soon to appear in Regina King's excellent One Night in Miami. Hodge is in talks to join the Dwayne Johnson film for director Jaume Collet-Serra. Black Adam is a serving as a spin-off of Shazam!, with the plan being that the character will meet up with Shazam in a future movie.The Wrap says that Aldis Hodge is in talks to play Hawkman in Black Adam. There have been several different version of Hawkman in the comics, but the original was "Carter Hall, an archaeologist and museum curator who lives out his destiny as a reincarnation of the ancient Egyptian prince Khufu using magic weaponry." All versions of Hawkman "use of archaic weaponry and by large, artificial wings, attached to a harness made from the special Nth metal that allows flight."

In Black Adam, Dwayne Johnson's Black Adam is a member of an ancient civilization chosen by the Council of Wizards – who also helped out Billy Batson in Shazam! – to become a hero and save his people. However, Black Adam's methods were considered to be too cruel and villainous, and he was imprisoned by the council. Now, 5000 years later, Black Adam has escaped, and the Justice Society – Hawkman, Cyclone, Atom Smasher, and Dr. Fate – unite to stop him. Besides Hodge's Hawkman, the only other member of the Justice Society to be cast so far is Atom Smasher, who is played by Noah Centineo.

Hodge gave a strong performance earlier this year in The Invisible Man. And he's even better in the upcoming One Night in Miami, where he plays Jim Brown. Every time he pops up in something I get the sense that he's on the cusp of becoming a huge star, and landing a role in a big superhero movie certainly adds fuel to that fire.

Jaume Collet-Serra, the filmmaker behind wonderfully trashy high-concept pics like Orphan, The Commuter, and Non-Stop, as well as the upcoming Disney pic Jungle Cruise – which also stars Johnson – is set to helm Black Adam, while Rory Haines and Sohrab Noshirvani are credited with the most recent draft of the screenplay. Adam Sztykiel wrote a draft before that.

Johnson has been official attached to play Black Adam since at least 2017, but his involvement goes back even further than that. The actor first became associated with the project in 2007, and by 2014, he said he was still very much interested in the role. The original plan was to have Black Adam as the villain in Shazam!, but things changed, and the character was saved for his own individual movie. At some point, though, you can bet Black Adam and Shazam will meet up.