By Lisa Richwine
Actor Dwayne Johnson made a dramatic entrance at the annual Comic-Con pop culture convention on Saturday, hovering above a smoke-filled stage in a sleek superhero costume and promising “the DC Universe will never be the same.”
Johnson previewed his upcoming Warner Bros film Black Adam, a story inspired by DC Comics about a former slave who is granted god-like powers and awakens 5,000 years later in modern times.
His appearance set off flickering lights – meant to evoke lightning – that had been handed out to more than 6,000 fans at a convention hall in San Diego.
The actor, who is playing his first superhero role, said he had wanted to portray the anti-hero character for more than a decade. The film will debut in movie theaters in October.
“It has been a long journey, one that has been fueled with passion, with commitment, with grit,” Johnson said.
Director Jaume Collet-Serra, who worked with Johnson on last year’s action-adventure film Jungle Cruise, described Black Adam as a “Dirty Harry type of character” who has “his own sense of justice and mortality.”
“When the system is corrupt, sometimes you need somebody that breaks the system down,” Collet-Serra said.
