Superhero Bits: Marvel's Midnight Suns Reviews Arrive, Amazon Is Getting Into DC Animation & More

(Superhero Bits is a collection of stories, updates, and videos about anything and everything inspired by the comics of Marvel, DC, and more. For comic book movies, TV shows, merchandise, events, and whatever catches our eye, this is the place to find anything that falls through the cracks.)

In this edition of Superhero Bits:

• Reviews for "Marvel's Midnight Suns" are in.

• The "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" Oscars campaign begins.

• "Shazam! Fury of the Gods" is going to be pretty long (but not as long as some other superhero movies).

• Amazon is probably getting into the DC animation business.

• All that and more!

Very little has been revealed by way of specifics about "The Boys" season 4, but we do know that Jeffrey Dean Morgan is getting in on the action. Who is he playing? What will he be doing? We have no idea! But the actor recently shared the above post on Instagram providing a little tease of the script he's working with, while also that he is "sure as s***" ready for his turn on the show. We'll see what they've got in store for us in due time.

It appears as though the runtime for director David F. Sandberg's "Shazam! Fury of the Gods" has been revealed. Per One Take News, the DC sequel will clock in at 2 hours and 10 minutes. Or, to put it another way, two minutes shorter than the original "Shazam!" which hit theaters in 2019. As we've increasingly seen superhero movie runtimes climb up close to three hours, with "Avengers: Endgame," "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever," and "The Batman" serving as a few examples, this appears as though it's going to be in the minority. For what it's worth, as we reported in this very column, Sandberg is completely done with the movie, so the runtime isn't going to climb in the lead up to the release.

Recently, Quentin Tarantino made headlines when he said that Marvel actors aren't movie stars — rather, it's the characters, such as Captain America, that are the stars. Well, one of Tarantino's frequent collaborators and an MCU mainstay, Samuel L. Jackson, takes issue with that. Speaking with Entertainment Weekly recently, the longtime Nick Fury actor addressed the topic and kindly disagreed with Tarantino's sentiment.

"It takes an actor to be those particular characters, and the sign of movie stardom has always been, what, asses in seats? What are we talking about? That's not a big controversy for me to know that, apparently, these actors are movie stars. Chadwick Boseman is Black Panther. You can't refute that, and he's a movie star."

I'm not going to inject my opinion here, but I think it would be safe and fair to say that, well before he took up the mantle of Nick Fury, Jackson was (and is) a movie star. So maybe he's got a bit of a healthy perspective on the matter, eh?

Buckle up, DC fans, because we've got some unexpected news. Channing Dungey, the head of Warner Bros. TV, revealed during Content London that WBTV is about to close a big deal with Amazon that would see Prime Video producing DC animated projects. Yes, you read that right! While HBO Max is still going to be the main DC hub, Warner Bros. Discovery is comfortable making deals to have projects go elsewhere, and Amazon is ready to make a deal. Per Deadline, Dungey said the following:

"With animation we used to be about staying in-house but now we are doing it on different platforms. HBO Max is the first stop but we are in the process of closing a big deal with Amazon featuring DC branded content in animation."

As for what projects might be headed to Amazon? It's too early to speculate, but one thing we do know is that "Batman: Caped Crusader" is no longer happening at HBO Max and is in need of a new home. Maybe that would be a good place to start? Either way, this is an intriguing prospect.