When you head to the theater to see Shazam!, just keep an eye on his suit and remember that it cost more to make than you’ve probably ever seen.
TotalFilm recently sat down with Shazam! costume designer Leah Butler to get the scoop on the iconic costume. The first thing you should know is Butler states that these costumes were not cheap to build. “Each suit costs, oh boy, upwards of a million? We have ten suits,” said Butler.
What led to them costing so much? There was a lot going into the process of building them. “The exterior suit is a spandex suit that goes over a musculature suit, and each muscle has been sculpted on the body of Zach (Levi) so it accents and highlights his shape and size,” Butler said. “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 told TotalFilm. “There is wiring throughout the costume. It’s a 26-volt AA rechargeable battery. It lasts about two hours at full charge.”
“It took 16 weeks to build the costume. 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,” Butler continued.
Costumes are never as cheap as you think they are unless someone is wearing something off the rack, but this one definitely ranks up there on the insanity scale. Think of it this way, David F. Sandberg, the director of Shazam!, made his hit horror film Lights Out for a reported $4.9M. We can only imagine what Sandberg thought as he saw 10 of them hanging on a rack in the costume department.
Shazam! hits theaters on April 5.
