Shazaam
edit
The nonexistent film
Shazaam has been alleged by to have starred
Sinbad(
pictured) as a genie.
Imagine if you woke up this morning and Disney's 1998 animation
A Bug's Life did not exist. After endlessly scouring the internet, you'd come up with nothing, despite your own distinct memories of a bunch of ants going on wild hijinks through the undergrowth. You'd turn to your best friend, your brother, your mum, and say, "Hey, remember
A Bug's Life? It was about ants", and your friend/brother/mum would turn to you and says: "No, darling. You're thinking about
Antz."
This is how those who believe in the "Sinbad genie movie" feel when people say they are simply getting confused about Shaq's
Kazaam.
Twin films – remarkably similar movies that are released at the same time – are relatively common.
Amelia Tait,
New Statesman[12]
Many people
falsely remember a similar 1990s film titled
Shazaam, starring comedian and actor
Sinbad as a genie. However, no such film ever existed, and it is possible people are misremembering
Kazaam as the aforementioned film.
[12]Sinbad denied having ever starred in
Shazaam on
Twitter.
[13] One theory for the belief in
Shazaam is that Sinbad wore a genie costume while introducing the 1977 film
Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger on
TNT in 1994.
[14][15] In addition, in the late 1960s,
Hanna-Barbera had an animated series about a genie called
Shazzan.
[16]
The earliest online reference to
Shazaamdates to 2009, when an anonymous
Yahoo! Answers user made a post asking other users if they remembered a 1990s movie starring Sinbad as a genie, finding no success in finding others who shared their memories. Isolated incidents of Internet users asking about the movie would pop up over the next years: In 2011,
Reddit user /u/MJGSimple made a post likewise asking users about the movie, and recalled its title to be "
Shazaam", although they were not certain about its title. On 11 August 2015,
Vice News published a story discussing the
Berenstain Bears and its relation to the
Mandela Effect, which helped popularize the r/MandelaEffect Reddit community, where users flocked to discuss
Shazaam. Afterwards, discussions of the alleged Sinbad film sharply rose in prominence.
[12]As an
April Fools' Day prank in 2017,
CollegeHumor released a parody
VHStrailer for
Shazaam starring Sinbad, in which he plays a genie who gets released from his lamp by two children, Rachael and James.
[17][18]
During the production of
Shazam! Fury of the Gods (2023), director
David F. Sandberg planned to give Sinbad a cameo role as a nod to the alleged 1990s film. However, Sinbad cancelled the appearance due to health issues.
[19]
en.m.wikipedia.org
