Leah Butler details Zachary Levi’s costume in ‘Shazam’ which cost $1 million, inspired by New 52
The DCCU gets a bit bigger with the upcoming Shazam! film, starring Zachary Levi and costume designer Leah Butler spoke with Total Film about the design elements and the hefty price tag of $1 million each….there are 10 of them!
Butler explained that she “took a lot of inspiration from the New 52, with the hooded cape,” as well as Greek and Roman symbolism and added a texture to the suit that’s “3D printed on the fabric.”
“The exterior suit is a spandex suit that goes over a musculature suit, and each muscle has been sculpted on the body of Zach so it accents and highlights his shape and size,” Butler said, detailing the electronics which enable the suit to light up.
“There is actually a battery in the back – we luckily had a cape to cover it all up or I don’t know where we would have put all that stuff – and it is remotely lit through a switchboard operator” Butler said. “There is wiring throughout the costume. It’s a 26-volt AA rechargeable battery. It lasts about two hours at full charge.” The time-intensive nature of the costume alone sounds like it’d drive up the cost. There’s so much that goes into a costume.
“It took 16 weeks to build the costume,” Butler said. “We had to scan Zach’s body and start building the costume even before he started his very strict regime — his diet and working out.”
They also made a more physical copy of their star, having “a sculptor who sculpts Zach’s body so we can have the body form available.”
So the price tag?
“Each suit costs, oh boy, upwards of a million? We have ten suits,” Butler concluded. That’s more than twice the total budget of Sandberg’s first film, Lights Out.
Shazam! arrives in theaters on April 5.
Levi is joined by Asher Angel as Billy Batson, Jack Dylan Grazer, who plays Billy’s best friend Freddy Freeman. Mark Strong (Sinestro in the Green Lantern film) plays the villain, Dr. Thaddeus Sivana and the following cast set: Grace Fulton as Mary, Ian Chen as Eugene, Jovan Armand as Pedro and Faithe Herman as Darla.
The film is firmly set in the DCEU, but stands in contrast to Batman v Superman and Man of Steel with a fun and “family-centric” tone. Check out the trailer HERE
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