Oh, Flash, you poor poor speedster. The long-planned solo movie forEzra Miller’s Justice Leaguer has faced a rocky path to production since it was announced back in 2014. In the midst of Warner Bros. and DC Films redirection for the DC Extended Universe,The Flashhas lost two filmmakers –Abraham Lincoln Vampire HunterscribeSeth Grahame-SmithandDopehelmerRick Famuyiwa– and now the studio has recruitedJoby Haroldto rewrite the script.
PerVariety, Harold will do a “page one rewrite” of the script while the studio is on the hunt for a new director with an aim to “take script in a different direction”. Grahame-Smith and Famuyiwa both penned versions of the screenplay while they were attached.
There’s honestly no way to tell if this is good or bad news. Harold has a slim resume to date his biggest projects being two upcoming tentpoles – Warner Bros’King Arthurand Lionsgate’sRobin Hood: Origins. He also previously wrote and directed the 2007 thrillerAwakeand executive producedEdge of Tomorrow.
However, the move does seem to fly in the face of the studio’s position as home for filmmaker-driven movies. It’s not necessarily a bad thing for a studio to guide the path of their franchise (Marvel being the most obvious parallel example), but hiring someone to rewrite the screenplay based on the drafts of two departed filmmakers doesn’t scream “filmmaker-driven”. It will certainly be interesting to see which director signs on next and whether they make a pass at the new script. That said, if a project isn’t working, sometimes a fresh start is just what you need.
We caught up with Miller last Novemberand got his thoughts on The Flash’s pre-production shakeups. Here’s what he had to say,
These are groups of people taking the development of projects extremely seriously, and the teams are changing all the time. There’s often a lot of flux in who the team of the production of a film is before that production starts, and in this case, you hear about it, because it’s a critical figure—the directors that have been coming on and leaving. For me, it’s sort of a tragic relay race, and we’ve had a couple really incredible people carry this baton, and their marks are left on that baton, and the work that they’ve given to the project will certainly be represented in whatever the final product comes to be.
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