The Spider-Verse Writers' Plan For The Flash Was 'Not A Multiversal Story'
The Flash may be the fastest man alive, but his upcoming movie has had a slow crawl to release. We've previously documented the full timeline of production on "The Flash" and the many different directors and writers who've been at the helm. In 2015, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller ("The Lego Movie") were hired to write a treatment for "The Flash," with an option to direct. They instead chose to board "Solo: A Star Wars Story" as co-directors, but were later fired from that movie and replaced with Ron Howard. Fortunately, they got a second shot at the world of superheroes with "Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse" (Lord co-wrote the screenplay, and Miller produced).
The final version of "The Flash" was directed by Andy Muschietti ("It") and written by John Francis Daley & Jonathan Goldstein ("Spider-Man: Homecoming"), and Joby Harold ("Army of the Dead"). However, Lord and Miller retain off-screen writing credits for "additional material," indicating that elements of their original treatment remain in the final film. The story is primarily inspired by 2011 comic "Flashpoint" by Geoff Johns and Andy Kubert, in which Barry Allen, aka The Flash, travels back in time to stop his mother Nora from being killed. This results in an alternate timeline where he isn't the Flash, Batman isn't Bruce Wayne, Superman is apparently absent, and the world is in peril.
"Flashpoint" wasn't broadly about the multiverse, but rather about the impact of a single change to the timeline (similar to "Back to the Future Part II"). In "The Flash," it's been adapted to fit both Hollywood's ongoing multiverse craze and a desire to reset the DC Universe ahead of James Gunn and Peter Safran's reign. Considering their work on the "Spider-Verse" movies, one might think that Lord & Miller's take on "The Flash" similarly spanned the DC multiverse. However, speaking to the Hollywood Reporter, Lord & Miller said they had something different in mind.
Time travel, but not multiverse
THR did an in-depth profile of Lord & Miller ahead of "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse" hitting theaters, and additional comments have now been published in THR's "Heat Vision" newsletter. Talking about "The Flash" (Lord & Miller haven't seen it, so they're going off the trailers), Miller said that their version was similar in some ways, and different in others:
"It did involve time travel, but it was not a multiversal story. So I think it is safe to say that this is its own unique thing. There are definitely some things that were in the trailers that I've seen that were similar to things that are in our treatment, but I'm certain that, from what I know now of the story, it seems quite different from what we had."
Lord added that, "A lot of our treatment was about how much food [the Flash] had to consume." In the comics, the Flash's super speed means a super fast metabolism; he has to eat huge amounts of food to keep up with his powers. The cartoons "Justice League" and "Young Justice" feature Wally West (Barry Allen's protege and successor) frequently chowing down on huge meals and it sounds like Lord and Miller's "Flash" would've characterized Barry similarly.
Legendary comic writer Grant Morrison — who also had a go penning "The Flash" — told Rolling Stone that their take wouldn't have involved the multiverse either. "[My script] was a Flash story, so it wasn't where they wanted to go with multiverse and stuff. And that was the end of it."
It seems that centering "The Flash" around the multiverse — with all the nostalgia cameos that opened the door to — is what finally got the project off the ground. Time will soon tell if the approach pays off.
"The Flash" releases in theaters on June 16, 2023.