Regardless of the massive overhauls at Warner Bros. Discovery and DC Studios over the last year, they could still be banking on a sequel to The Flash. They are clearly putting their cart before the horse if this is true, but according to a report, a script for the tentative sequel is written and the lead might remain the same.
Umberto Gonzalez reports for TheWrap that Aquaman scribe David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick has a Flash screenplay in a drawer somewhere lying in wait with the hope that the movie out this weekend does well. “The first film in the series has to pass the box office test first, but a follow-up is on the table according to insiders with knowledge of the project,” Gonzalez wrote.
He added, “The Flash is currently tracking to open around $70 million at the domestic box office,” (which might be too high a projection) but the film has to garner a total close to The Batman’s $770 million global haul “in order to get a sequel off the ground.” For a variety of reasons, that’s an uphill battle.
The DCU is on the horizon and the remnants of the past The Flash holds onto, and tampers with, are crumbling. Shazam 2 and Black Adam bombed, and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom isn’t looking good based on test screenings. It will be the last of the DCEU once production begins on Superman: Legacy – the starting line for James Gunn’s reset.
He might work around his plans by making them mainline continuity and establishing an Elseworlds universe where Flash can return. The film is gilded in the Multiverse concept and Gunn has hinted Elseworld projects are in active development that could bring back characters such as Black Adam with Dwayne Johnson in tow. Entire continuities, as in the Snyderverse, could hypothetically be revived too.
For the sake of argument, that would mean there is a solid, substantial chance Ezra Miller remains The Scarlet Speedster into the future should a sequel be greenlit. The Flash’s director Andy Muschietti and his sister Barbara avowed on The Discourse podcast that they aren’t considering anybody else, so doubts about Miller’s status coming to naught go beyond hypothetical.
“If [a sequel] happens, yes,” Andy Muschietti said. “I don’t think there’s anyone that can play that character as well as they did. The other depictions of the character are great, but this particular vision of the character, they just excelled in doing it. And, as you said, the two Barrys – it feels like a character that was made for them.”
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