The Flash Movie Release Date, Cast, Story, and News

Despite the fact that Justice League wasn’t as big a hit as the studio wanted, fans are likely to want to see more of Ezra Miller as Barry Allen—and we’re not just talking about Miller’s delightful cameo on Crisis On Infinite Earths.

After names like Robert Zemeckis, Matthew Vaughn, and Sam Raimi had been floated to replace Rick Famuyiwa (who had replaced Seth Grahame-Smith) as director on the film, the studio seemingly settled on Spider-Man: Homecoming writers John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein (who also directed the excellent Game Night for the studio). Most recently, however, Warner Bros. picked It Chapter One and TwoAndy Muschietti to helm the film after creative differences led to Daley and Goldstein’s departure.

Apparently, WB previously offered the job to former Batman director (and likely future former Batman) Ben Affleck. It turns out James Wan was offered the job, too, but turned The Flash movie down to make Aquaman instead. 

Who is actually writing this thing? The Flash movie has had a parade of writers, from Geoff Johns to Rick Famuyiwa to Joby Harold to Grant Morrison and Ezra Miller himself. But now Christina Hodson of the upcoming Birds of Prey movie and the delightful Bumblebee is on the case. Hopefully she sticks around!

The Flash: Flashpoint Movie Release Date

The Flash was previously slated for a July 1, 2022 release date, but actually had that date moved UP one month for a change. It will now open on June 3, 2022. We’ll see if it actually crosses that finish line.

The full schedule of DC superhero movies can be found here.

The Flash Movie Cast

Ezra Miller will play Barry Allen in The Flash movie, and he made his first appearance as the character in two brief sequences in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and another in an equally brief scene in Suicide Squad before appearing more prominently as the character in the Justice League movie.

Kiersey Clemons (Dope) has long been on board to play Iris West.  Hopefully she still is.

Billy Crudup was once set to play Barry Allen’s father, Dr. Henry Allen. It’s not clear if he’s still on board.

The Flash Movie Story

At one point the plan was for The Flash movie to adapt, in some form, the Flashpoint story by Geoff Johns and Andy Kubert. In it, Barry learns that his mother wasn’t murdered by his father, but by an evil speedster named Eobard Thawne. Barry goes back in time to prevent the murder (and thus keep his father out of prison), and when he returns to the present, he finds that time has changed dramatically.

“What fans understand when they hear Flashpoint,” Ezra Miller told Entertainment Weekly, “would be almost like hearing a word like ‘Crisis.’ We start to understand that our precious DC universe will inevitably be torn asunder to an endless, headache-inducing fabric of multiversality. The DC Hyper-Extended Multiverse, as I plan to call it. Quote me!”

Geoff Johns added that while we’ve already seen Flashpoint adapted twice, once as an excellent animated movie (Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox), and once as the subject of the third season of The Flash TV show, “There’s elements in it that we’re going to be playing into that we couldn’t do anywhere else…The scale of it, the Batman story of it all.”

The TV version was more low key than the comics, and told a more personal story. But “the scale” that he refers to means that there’s potential on the big screen for Flashpoint to almost function as another Justice League film if that’s the route they decide to take. For example, Gal Gadot had once been rumored to appear as Wonder Woman in this, and a key piece of Flashpoint is that Themyscira and Atlantis are at war. Could this mean we’d see Jason Momoa, as well?

But more importantly is “the Batman story of it all.” A report in Variety once indicated that Ben Affleck is expected to appear in the movie. The thing is, in Flashpoint, it’s not Bruce Wayne who is Batman, but Thomas Wayne. Jeffrey Dean Morgan played Thomas Wayne in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, so…you do the math. But the implication that Ben Affleck might appear in the movie actually does make sense, especially if Bruce Wayne/Batman appear in the movie’s framing sequences. Barry Allen’s interaction with Thomas Wayne in the Flashpoint timeline could help bring some closure to Batman’s arc, and might be the “cool way to segue out of” the role that Affleck had once hinted at. The problem, of course, is that Affleck is long gone from the DCEU, and Robert Pattinson is the new Batman. It seems unlikely that Warner Bros. would want to reopen old wounds here.

In any case, this won’t be like any other superhero movie from the sound of things. I wrote more about the potential implications of a Flashpoint movie right here.

But it’s not clear if the plan is still for this to be an actual Flashpoint adaptation, although recent comments from director Andy Muschietti indicate that his movie will retain certain elements of that story. We’ll update this with more information when it becomes available.