'The Flash' slated to begin production in April 2021
The Flash will reportedly begin production in April 2021 with Ezra Miller set to reprise his role as the Scarlet Speedster Barry Allen.
As reported by casting website Backstage, the highly-awaited DC tentpole by It director Andy Muschietti will start filming at Warner Bros.’ Leavesden studios in the UK. It was previously reported that production of the superhero film could begin in March.
The DC solo film will feature the Flashpoint storyline created by Geoff Johns and Andy Kubert for DC Comics in 2011. In the story, Barry travels back in time in a bid to prevent his mother’s death. But in doing so, he wakes up in an entirely different timeline: his mother Nora is alive while his father, Henry, who is alive in his own timeline, died from a heart attack.
The comic miniseries also introduced a different DC universe: Thomas Wayne becomes the Batman after Bruce’s death while his wife Martha goes insane and eventually turns into the Joker. Wonder Woman and the Amazons are at war with Aquaman and the rest of Atlantis while the U.S. government captures Kal-El after his ship crashed in Metropolis instead of Smallville.
The Flash solo film will also see the return of two actors who previously donned the cape and cowl. Michael Keaton’s iconic Dark Knight from Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman will appear alongside Barry in the upcoming film as well as Ben Affleck, who played the role in the previous DCEU film Justice League.
In an interview with Vanity Fair, Muschietti said that Affleck’s character is “a very substantial part of the emotional impact of the movie.”
“The interaction and relationship between Barry and Affleck’s Wayne will bring an emotional level that we haven’t seen before,” he said. "It’s Barry’s movie, it’s Barry’s story, but their characters are more related than we think. They both lost their mothers to murder, and that’s one of the emotional vessels of the movie. That’s where the Affleck Batman kicks in.”
The director also described the movie as a “bit of a hinge” as it “presents a story that implies a unified universe where all the cinematic iterations that we’ve seen before are valid.”
“It’s inclusive in the sense that it is saying all that you’ve seen exists, and everything that you will see exists, in the same unified multiverse,” he said.
During the DC FanDome Q&A last year, producer Barbara Muschietti said that the film “is going to be fun and exciting and there are a lot of DC characters in it.”
“Flash is the superhero of this film because he is the bridge between all of these characters and timelines. And in a way, it restarts everything and doesn't forget anything,” she said.
The Flash is slated to premiere on Nov. 4, 2022.
(Images from IMDB)