Peter Segal Talks Shazam!

From SHH, "As soon as we signed John August to write it, the next day we saw on the Internet that Jake Gyllenhaal would be a great Captain Marvel and we were already in negotiations with him," laughed director Peter Segal ("50 First Dates") last week. "I said, 'Well, he'd be great, but we've literally just signed the writer!' " Nevertheless, Segal said all is full steam ahead for his big-budget take on one of comicdom's oldest heroes (originally created in 1939), the catchphrase-spewing Captain Marvel. "It's like a combination of 'Big' and 'Superman,' " the comedy director said of the tone he's aiming to capture. "It's a 13-year-old boy who, when he says the word 'Shazam!,' he gets the powers of Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Mercury and Achilles. So basically, he can fly, he has superpowers, but when he morphs into a 28-year-old superhero, on the inside he's still 13. So, you get that quality of what Tom Hanks brought to 'Big,' but you also have a kick-ass superhero." The film is being produced by New Line Cinema, and Segal promised it won't be anything like the laughably bad 1970s live-action show (seriously, Google it). "No, we're not going for the cheesy," Segal promised. "I looked at that myself, and I thought, 'The guy with the boots and the red suit — could we have some fun with this?' but we're going to be really loyal to the origin of the comic book, then definitely liven it up."