The Hollywood Reporter has a run-down of upcoming DC movie adaptations.
This past fall, Warners quietly hired three of DC’s biggest writers — Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison and Marv Wolfman — to act as consultants and writers for its superhero line of movies. The move involved taking back the reins on projects being handled by such producers as Charles Roven (“The Flash”) and Akiva Goldsman (“Teen Titans”).
Hmm, remember how Grant Morrison couldn’t talk about a Flash movie? It goes on:
The moves have begun to pay off. Johns worked up a new treatment for a “Flash” script, being written by Dan Mazeau; Johns will act in a producer capacity on the project, which has not attached a director.
We’d heard rumors about the Dan Mazeau script before, but nothing official.
But a Geoff Johns story treatment — and producer credit? That should make a lot of Flash fans happy. Not only does Johns have a well-regarded and successful run on The Flash from the first half of this decade, he also has the high-profile Flash: Rebirth.
I wonder if we were all looking in the wrong direction. Maybe this is the Flash news that Geoff Johns was hinting at last week.
I wonder if this counts as a Cue Cullen moment?
(via Newsarama by way of @onceuponageek. More discussion at Major Spoilers, CBR, Slashfilm, Screen Rant, and MTV Splash Page.)
Hot on the heels of Warner Bros. producer Charles Roven telling Sci Fi Wire that the Flash movie is “shrouded in mystery” but not actually dead, IESB reports that Dan Mazeau, writer of the upcoming Jonny Quest film, is writing a script.
IESB spoke with Roven, who would not confirm the news, but did talk about the character:
I was always a big fan of the comics. I was around for… Gosh, this is embarrassing, you know, the last two Flashes. The Flash that was the policeman and Kid Flash, Wally, and his uncle. Those are the two Flashes that I grew with, so I was excited to have the opportunity to try and see if I could actually translate those characters to the screen.
When the Flash movie was originally announced in 2004, David Goyer (Batman Begins, The Dark Knight) was going to write and direct. He finished the script, but Warner Bros. thought it was too dark, and took him off the project. Shawn Levy (Night at the Museum) was brought as the new director early in 2007, then replaced later that year by David Dobkin (Fred Claus), and the movie was re-positioned to spin out of the planned Justice League film.
Of course, all that fell apart, the Justice League film is basically on hold, and now Warner Bros. actually wants dark films. But rather than resurrect Goyer’s script, they’re apparently going back to the drawing board.
My cynical take: The original script probably featured Wally West as he took over from Barry Allen. With DC repositioning Barry Allen as the primary Flash, they probably didn’t want to muddy the waters with his successor.
Read up on the sordid history of the Flash Feature Film.
