The year is 2014. Warner Bros. makes a superhero-sized splash and announces not just that Justice League, Wonder Woman, and Aquaman movies are coming, but that a Flash movie is coming and the Flash will be played by Ezra Miller.
Fast-forward to today. Finally, after almost a decade, The Flash is finally coming to theaters. In that time at least three different teams of filmmakers tried to figureout how to bring the speedster to the big screen, just as the DC slate of films had an almost unfathomable roller coaster of up and down success, from Justice Leagueâs huge disappointment to Aquamanâs incredible triumph, the Snyder Cut, Superman cameos, and eventually, a whole new regime thatâs pushing the reset button.Â
Director Andy Muschietti and his sister/producing partner Barbara Muschietti came on board The Flashin late 2019, as all of that was still taking place. Along with them came writer Christina Hodson, whoâd also writtenBatgirl, Birds of Prey, and Bumblebee. The team got to work just as, a few months later, a video of their star Ezra Miller assaulting a fan leaked online. It was the first of several run-ins with the law for Miller, whichâespecially after Warner Bros.â new CEO David Zazlav canceled the Hodson-penned Batgirl movie in 2022âseemed like a solid reason to cancel The Flash as well.
So, when io9 got on the phone with both Muschiettis recently, those were the two biggest things on our mind. Why did this version of The Flash make it to the finish line when none of the others could, and did they ever feel like the film wasnât going to happen after Millerâs legal run-ins?
âI think a big part of [our version getting made] was the push that we got with Christina Hodson to get the script in shape,â Barbara Muschietti told io9. âAnd when we bite on a bone, we donât let go generally [laughs].â
Muschietti added that having time to really focus on the film during the pandemic, and not much else, also helped it along. âWe developed it through the pandemic, which was absolutely nuts, but we wanted to keep it going,â she said. âSo even if we had to push prep for six months, we just kept on working remotely. And by the time that the pandemic was at a place that we could actually go to the UK and start hard prep, there was enough there to hit the floor running and we got to make our movie.â It didnât hurt that they had the idea to bring back Michael Keaton as Batman and he said âYes.â
As for the controversy surrounding Miller, Andy Muschietti says there was never a time they thought that would get in the way of the film being released. âWe believed in this project from the beginning and over the course of those two years, during the executionâ prep and then production, and especially when the movie was finally shown to the first audiencesâour belief and our confidence in the movie just grew.â
The Flash opens in theaters June 16.
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