Sinbad Cartoon: Sorting Out The Facts, Rumors, And False Memories From The Non-Existent 90s Genie Movie He Never Made


Is there a Sinbad cartoon called Shazaam? The topic of whether or not comedian Sinbad made a cartoon or live-action movie called Shazaam (about a Genie in a bottle) has been a trending topic online ever since it came up on Reddit a few months ago, and the Inquisitr is here to help you sort it all out.

Sinbad (The Comedian) Has Not Made A Movie Called Shazaam

David Adkins, an actor and stand-up comedian who performs under the mononym Sinbad, was huge in the 1990s. In addition to his thriving stand-up career, he parlayed that fame into a series of second-tier TV shows and B-movies at the height of his popularity. He appeared on the Cosby Show spinoff A Different World; had his own show, The Sinbad Show, for a season; and appeared in the movies Necessary Roughness and Jingle All The Way, among others. At least one of them, Homeward Bound II: Lost in San Francisco, is a cartoon, so in that sense, there is at least one Sinbad cartoon.

Sinbad, aka David Adkins, was huge in the 1990’s. [Image by s_bukley/Shutterstock]

One thing Sinbad did not do during his few years at the top in the mid-1990s was make a cartoon called Shazaam, nor did he make a live-action movie of the same name. You can look at Sinbad’s IMDb résumé for yourself: there is no Shazaam on the list. That’s because the movie doesn’t exist.

Shaquille O’Neal Did Make A 1990s Movie About A Genie, Called Kazaam

David Adkins/Sinbad wasn’t the only African-American media sensation who was at the peak of his popularity in the middle 1990s. Basketball player Shaquille O’Neal was also huge, both literally and figuratively, during this time period. Besides his career on the basketball court, O’Neal parlayed his fame into rap albums as well as appearances in second- and third-tier TV shows and B-movies.

Like Sinbad, Shaquille O’Neal, was big in the 1990s. [Image by FeatureFlash Photo Agency/Shutterstock]

During this time period, Shaquille did, in fact, make a movie about a genie. It’s called Kazaam, and it’s almost universally regarded as terrible (it has a 6 percent critics’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes).

Conflating The Two, And The Mandela Effect

So here we have a situation where two men and one movie have collectively gotten jumbled up in the heads of a lot of people who are old enough to remember the mid-1990s. Shaq and Sinbad are both African American, they’re both large men, they both appeared in B-movies in the 90s, when they were both at their career peaks, and one of them made a genie movie. You can see how it would be easy to confuse the two, as well as get the title of the genie movie wrong.

And this confusion has led to the discussion of the so-called “Mandela Effect.” It’s named for the mistaken belief, apparently shared by many people, that Nelson Mandela died in prison in the 1980s. Apparently, several people are convinced that they remember reading about Mandela dying in a South African prison at some point in the 80s. In actuality, Mandela was released from prison, alive and well, in 1990. He went on to serve as the president of South Africa and died in 2013 at the age of 95.

Depending on whom you ask, the Mandela Effect is one of two things. It’s either a flaw in the human brain that causes you to remember something that never happened, or it’s evidence that there are multiple universes, including some in which Nelson Mandela really did die in prison in the 1980s and some in which Sinbad made a genie movie called Shazaam. However, it’s up to the reader to decide which explanation makes the most sense.

Sinbad Is Actually Going To Make A Genie Movie Called Shazaam

Sinbad, for his part, apparently feels that if millions of people remember seeing him in a genie movie called Shazaam, he might as well make one. As Comic Book reports, Sinbad took to Twitter to announce that he’s going to make the movie, if for no other reason than so people can have something real to equate with him, rather than a false memory.

And it appears that Sinbad is serious about it, and not just making idle talk on Twitter for the amusement of his fans. As of this writing, it’s not clear whether Sinbad’s planned Shazaam movie will be live-action or a cartoon.

[Featured Image by Randy Miramontez/Shutterstock]

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