‘Black Adam’ producers say they made ‘a lot of edits’ to cut violence to obtain PG-13 rating

• "Black Adam" producers had to cut down several violent scenes to get a PG-13 rating.
• The film stars Dwayne Johnson as the DC antihero who defends the fictional country of Kahndaq.

Dwayne Johnson's "Black Adam" has been 15 years in the making, but the antihero has finally made his way to the big screen. The DC movie tells the story of Teth-Adam (Dwayne Johnson), a former slave who gets superpowers and defends the people of Kahndaq with vicious brutality.

Although Black Adam is a hero of sorts, he isn't afraid to cross the boundaries that other characters in the DC Extended Universe won't. But the producers had to cut down some of that violence to get the film a PG-13 rating from the Motion Picture Association of America.

Producers Hiram Garcia and Beau Flynn recently spoke to Collider about working on the film, and touched on which scenes were cut down to meet the PG-13 standards, with Garcia noting that they had to make "a lot of edits."

Unsurprisingly, these moments saw Black Adam fighting some of the villains in the story (called Intergang) and the film originally had double the amount of extremely violent scenes. But many of them had to be left on the cutting room floor.

Flynn said: "There are some great moments when Black Adam is in the [flying] bike chase sequence and drops one of the Intergang soldiers. Then there's this great moment where the truck bounces over the body. But those are moments that you need and remember in these movies, you know what I mean? You can't play it safe, and you have to go for it. And I think we have four or five of those."

The producer also clarified, '"At one point we had about ten, and we were able to find some compromise with the MPAA on that."

The duo also explained that there's a high level of violence in the movie because they wanted to make sure they "honored" the character from the comics.

Garcia said: "One of the things he's known for is his aggression and violence, and to do a Black Adam movie that didn't have that just wouldn't have been authentic." But he also noted that the studio was always aware they'd have to work with the MPAA on the rating.

"We knew it was going to be a collaborative process with the MPAA to finally get it to where we were able, to get that rating, but we were able to pull it off," he said.

For the moment, it's not clear if any of the cut scenes involved the Justice Society of America, the team of heroes who try to curb Black Adam's violence in Kahndaq. The squad features stars like Pierce Brosnan as Doctor Fate, Noah Centineo as Atom Smasher, Quintessa Swindell as Cyclone, and Aldis Hodge as Hawkman.

The producers said they are open to the idea of including some of the deleted scenes on the home entertainment release, as Flynn said: "There are going to be some features for when we release on home video and streaming. There'll be some cool elements for that too, but that's something we're talking about."

"Black Adam" is in theaters on Friday.