This week’s release of Justice League is a major marker in the DC Expanded Universe. However, it sounds like the Flash solo movie Flashpoint might even be bigger—and it may provide a way for Ben Affleck to get out of being Batman.
Back at San Diego Comic-Con, Warner Bros. casually announced that the Flash solo movie, which has gone through development hell in the past few years, would be called Flashpoint. Flashpoint is the name of a massive DC Comics storyline that basically unravels several alternate DC universes before settling on a wholly refreshed one. Here’s a recap:
In a new interview with Entertainment Weekly, Geoff Johns—one of DC’s main executive producers, who just so happened to also write the Flashpoint comics—said the following about bringing that storyline to the big screen:
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.
Yup, he just made it sound like Batman would be a part of the movie.
In Flashpoint, when Barry Allen finds himself in a new timeline, Batman is actually Bruce Wayne’s father Thomas, who became the Caped Crusader when Bruce was killed as a child. This was in the animated version of the story, but it wasn’t a part of the TV adaptation, because the current DC TV show The Flash doesn’t feature Batman. Of course, the DC movies do—and that’s a huge, key part to making Flashpoint so epic. Hypothetically the movie could start with Ben Affleck as Bruce Wayne, show someone else as Thomas Wayne and then, when the timeline gets reset, cast a younger Bruce Wayne. (That would be a pretty “graceful” exit, don’t you agree, Mr. Affleck?)
Add that to the previous rumors that Wonder Woman would be part of the movie and the massive potential for the adaptation slowly becomes clearer. (Plus, in the Flashpoint comics, Wonder Woman actually fights Aquaman, but there’s no word about Jason Momoa appearing yet.)
The problem with all of this is Flashpoint is not yet a sure thing. Much of it has to do with the success of Justice League. As of now, there’s no director, and we haven’t heard about a writer in months. Star Ezra Miller hasn’t even seen a script. “The development of the project has been a little Barry Allen-like in its mercurial tendencies,” Miller told EW. “But it looks more promising and more exciting than any of the other stages of development that we’ve been in.”
However, Miller does think that if the film works out, he’s got a new name for the DC universe.
What fans understand when they hear Flashpoint 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!
Done and done.