‘Black Adam’ Was Recut to Avoid an R Rating: ‘The Movie Was Just Really Violent’
“Black Adam” this week, but when the superhero pic was first submitted to the MPA, it earned an R rating.“We were battling with the [MPA] for a while, we were an R rating for several weeks, and it took a lot of work to get us under, to like make enough little tweaks to be able to get to that PG-13 bar,” producer Hiram Garcia told TheWrap in a recent interview.Johnson’s Black Adam is an anti-hero-like character who doles out his own sense of justice, killing at will, which stands in contrast to a number of other major superheroes that normally front their own movies.But Garcia, who is also president of production at Seven Bucks Productions, explained that the filmmaking team had already decided to push the boundaries of the PG-13 rating during production and then pull back as necessary in the editing room.“We always knew that we were going to be in that situation because we knew we were going to push it, and then we knew we’re gonna have to really work to get ourselves [to a PG-13], but we wanted to maximize that PG-13 rating, just to make sure we were honoring the character.”So what put “Black Adam” over the edge?“The movie was just really violent,” Garcia explained. “The movie was just violent.