Warner Bros
The Flash may be the “fastest man alive” in the pages of DC Comics but it looks like the Scarlet Speedster is still on the slow route to reach the silver screen in his own film franchise.
The Warner Bros. plan to launch the Justice League character in his own solo adventure is has been more of a marathon than a sprint. Filming is now expected to start late next year which puts the superhero movie on pace for a release date sometime in 2021.
The Flash solo film has never reached an official green-light status and no official release date has been announced. But studio sources confirmed Monday that a finish line in 2021 was not the target they had hoped for — in recent discussions the best-case scenario had been a March 2019 start-date for filming but that proved too impractical due to scheduling conflicts.
A primary issue: Ezra Miller, who portrayed the Flash in Justice League (2017), and is tabbed to reprise the role, is already locked-in for duty in another high-profile Warner Bros. project. That other project is Fantastic Beasts, the spin-off franchise rooted in the magical mythology of Harry Potter. Miller plays Credence Barebone in the wizarding world and is needed on set in July to start work on a third Fantastic Beasts installment.
The Flash project has, ironically, been difficult to get up and running. Filmmaking tandem Phil Lord and Chris Miller (The Lego Movie) were on board way back in 2015 ; that same year saw Seth-Grahame-Smith (who wrote the films script) identified as the ideal director to kick-start the fleet heros Hollywood fortunes. By the following year the new name in the mix was Dope director Rick Famuyiwa and 2018 was cited as the target year for release .
The studio has invested a lot of time and effort with not much to show in return. Warner Bros. shareholders, meanwhile, have been hearing about the ramping movie (and Millers participation in it) as far back as October 2014.
The Flash has a long and illustrious publishing history in comic books that dates back to 1940 although that FDR-era version of the character is quite different than the hero Miller portrays. Millers Flash is secretly Barry Allen, a character with roots going back to 1956.
The super-fast hero is also the title character of The Flash on The CW. The live-action primetime series premiered in 2014 and stars Grant Gustin as Barry Allen and his red-suited alias but the TV and film version differ in notable ways and do not share the same canon.
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Deadline
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