'The Flash' Movie Has Been Delayed Again, May Not Come Out Until 2021
The Flash may be the fastest man alive on the comic book pages, but when it comes to the big screen, he's positively sluggish.
The Flash standalone movie has been hit with yet another delay, as Warner Bros. pushes back the expected production start date for Ezra Miller's solo superhero film. Now it seems that Miller, who was cast as the scarlet speedster back in 2014, will have to wait at least three more years until he gets his solo movie.Variety reports that The Flash solo movie has been delayed again, and you may have to blame Fantastic Beasts for that. After facing numerous delays and a rotating line-up of directors, Warner Bros. is again pushing back the start of filming on the still untitled standalone Flash movie, which had originally been expected to begin shooting in March 2019.
The reported reason is that Miller's obligations to the third Fantastic Beasts movie took precedence. The third film in the Harry Potter spin-off series, in which Miller plays a key supporting character, begins shooting in July 2019. And since The Flash movie — which curiously, never received an official green light from the studio — is still undergoing script revisions, the studio decided to push production to late 2019, putting the potential The Flash release date on track for 2021.
Warner Bros. has been particularly slow to get The Flash solo movie to the big screen. After the studio cast Miller in the role of the speedster to much fanfare in 2014, the actor made his first appearance in the DC Extended Universe in a cameo in 2016's Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. He made his proper debut in 2017's Justice League, whose weak box office returns sent Warner Bros. in a frenzy over the future of the fledgling cinematic universe. Talk flared, then faded, about a standalone Flash film would be titled Flashpoint, but after the departure of two directors (Seth Grahame-Smith and Rick Famuyiwa both boarded and exited the project within a span of two years) those plans are up in the air. Currently, John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, the co-writers of Spider-Man: Homecoming, are attached as the directors for the untitled Flash movie.
The Flash and Cyborg standalone movies have sadly been the biggest victims of Warner Bros.' tenuous grasp on its DC cinematic universe. Both superheroes were intended to follow up 2017's Justice League with solo outings of their own, but this year's Aquaman and April's Shazam are the last solo superhero movies on the docket. Now I have to wonder if we'll get a Flash movie at all, or if he'll be consigned to the void like Ray Fisher's potential Cyborg movie. If the latter, it would be too bad, because Miller's zippy performance as the Flash was one of the few bright spots of Justice League. But perhaps — ironically in the Flash's case — slow and steady to the big screen could allow the hero to win the race.