The Flash’s Troubled Production and Ezra Miller Controversy Explained

Snyder’s casting of Miller was announced simultaneously with plans for Suicide Squad (2016), Wonder Woman (2017), Aquaman (2018), two Justice League films which would be released between 2017 and 2019, The Flash in 2018, and Cyborg and a new Green Lantern movie in 2020. Half of those obviously did not come to pass. But in the case of The Flash, it wasn’t from a lack of trying.

After James Wan turned down The Flash in favor of directing Aquaman, Phil Lord and Chris Miller were hired in April 2015 to write and possibly direct The Flash. The duo were fresh off the success of the 21 Jump Street flicks and The Lego Movie (2014). It would appear Lord and Miller’s treatment was the first to introduce the idea of time travel in a Flash film (a concept that would carry all the way into the 2023 final film). However, the pair soon departed to direct the ill-fated Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018).

Later that year, Seth Grahame-Smith (author and screenwriter of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter) was tapped to write and direct the film, working from the story penned by Lord and Miller. However, he also departed the project in April 2016, citing “creative differences.” Two months later, Dope director Rick Famuyiwa was hired to rewrite Grahame-Smith’s screenplay and direct the picture. Famuyiwa cast his Dope star Kiersey Clemons as Iris West and suggested on social media that the film would be something of a buddy film between the Flash and Cyborg (Ray Fisher). Gal Gadot, aka Wonder Woman, was also expected to appear in this version.

Famuyiwa got further than anyone before but ultimately pulled out of the project in late 2016 over “creative differences.” According to THR, he wanted to make a movie “with more edge” than WB intended. It is also worth noting that at this point the infrastructure and vision around the so-called DC Extended Universe was crumbling. Batman v Superman performed below studio expectations when it opened in March 2016, with many (including the studio) attributing the failure to Snyder’s dark, borderline nihilistic vision. Plans for doing a Justice League two-parter were scrapped just as Justice League was going into production. That movie was being rewritten on the day while also serving as the real introduction to Miller as Flash (as well as Fisher as Cyborg and Jason Momoa as Aquaman). And after enduring a devastating personal tragedy, Snyder agreed to step down from Justice League in May 2017 before extensive reshoots that were helmed by Joss Whedon.

It is at this point that the prospect of there ever being a Flash movie starring Ezra Miller seemed to dim. In fact, around the same time as Snyder felt Justice League slipping away, The Flash was placed “on hold” as screenwriter Joby Harold was brought on to do a “page one rewrite.” By May 2017, WB and a new emerging braintrust around DC films had a shortlist of directors in mind for The Flash: Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future, Forrest Gump… and more recently Welcome to Marwen), Matthew Vaughn (Kingsman, Kick-Ass), and even Jordan Peele (fresh off Get Out, not yet an Oscar winner). Later that summer, it was announced at San Diego Comic-Con the film was retitled Flashpoint and it would directly involve Barry Allen going back in time to prevent his mother’s murder.

In January 2018, directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein (Game Night and later Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves) agreed to step in to direct Flashpoint and rework the script, with a plan to shoot the picture in 2019. Miller, however, was reportedly not impressed with the comedic direction they were taking the material and convinced comic writer Grant Morrison to write a rival version of Flashpoint that would be in direct competition with the directors’ vision. Morrison later told Comicbook.com they only had two weeks to write their rival version and “it was good fun. It didn’t do the job they were looking for, which was to franchise things and set things up, and bring other characters in. It was a Flash story, so it wasn’t where they wanted to go with the multiverse stuff. And that was the end of it.”