‘Shazam 2’ director sets the record straight on Gal Gadot’s appearance

‘Shazam! Fury of the Gods’ is finally out and features a couple of previous DCU characters. These cameos include Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman and Jennifer Holland as Emilia Harcourt.

After Wonder Woman’s brief appearance at the end of the film, where she uses her powers to empower the wizard’s staff and bring Shazam back to life, many fans speculated that Gal Gadot wasn’t actually on the screen, and that her appearance was artificially manipulated.

However, director David F. Sandberg has taken to Twitter to clarify these rumors. Sandberg posted a video of him remotely directing the scene via Zoom, along with a caption explaining how the process worked.

Setting the record straight

“A certain cameo in #ShazamFuryOfTheGods had to be shot in England but I couldn’t go because of a visa issue so I directed remotely. It wasn’t a deepfake as some believe,” wrote Sandberg.

“I was surprised how well it went directing remotely but when I told @lottalosten about it she said ‘just don’t think you can direct everything this way now.”

He posted a third tweet, which includes a video of him on set with the caption: “I would never though. I love being on set. And you can’t be a unicorn eyeline if you’re not on set.”

Directing remotely

Sandberg also took time to answer fan questions about the difficulties of directing remotely.

“It wasn’t hard at all,” he explained. “But we had also already shot the scene with a stand-in so we knew exactly the shots needed.”

“We had measurements for how high the camera was off the ground, lens info, etc. So it was very paint by numbers.”

Speculations of ‘deepfaking’ Gadot’s appearance came after fans saw a screenshot of preproduction footage from the movie, where a stand-in actress is in a Wonder Woman costume. However, this scene was shot so they could recreate the actual scene with Gadot with remote directing.