Category Archives: Flash News

Flash News: Villains Month, Zero Year, Forever Evil

A quick round-up of Flash news from this week:

Flash #25

November’s Flash #25 will tie into Batman: Year Zero, with a pre-Flash Barry Allen traveling to Gotham City. Chris Sprouse and Karl Story provide art for the Francis Manapul/Brian Buccellato story. MTV Geek has the details and interviews Manapul and Buccellato.

CBR talks to Brian Buccellato about the three Flash “Villains Month” issues featuring Grodd, Reverse Flash and the Rogues.

DC has preview pages of Villains Month Week 1 including Grodd and Villains Month Week 2 including the Reverse Flash.

DC has decided to retool Justice League 3000 before launch. Kevin Maguire has been replaced after drawing an entire first issue that won’t be published, and Howard Porter will take over art on the series, which will be pushed back to a December launch.

Finally, Geoff Johns reveals the real premise behind Forever Evil: Earth’s Villains aren’t just taking over in the absence of the heroes, they’re fighting against someone worse: the Crime Syndicate, alternate-reality evil versions of the Justice League, back on Earth 3 in the New 52 multiverse. The article at IGN includes a promotional piece featuring new designs for the villains including the Crime Syndicate’s speedster, Johnny Quick.

Geoff Johns, Andrew Kreisberg Talk CW’s Upcoming Flash Series (via Collider)

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Following yesterday’s announcement that a new TV series starring The Flash will spin out of The CW’s popular (Green) Arrow‘s upcoming second season, producer/writers Geoff Johns (no intro necessary) and Andrew Kreisberg spoke to numerous media outlets via conference call to discuss some of the details. While most of the major bits have appeared elsewhere, including Speed Force, Collider has a very detailed transcript of the call.

For more on why Flash was chosen, the timeline for his introduction and more, follow the jump!

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UPDATE x3: Flash Returning to TV via CW’s Arrow

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UPDATE: The Hollywood Reporter confirms a Flash series is in development, with plans to introduce Barry Allen as a recurring character on Arrow this season. (via Newsarama)

“We plan to introduce the recurring character of Barry Allen who is the Flash,” [CW president Mark] Pedowitz told reporters. “We’re planning an origin story and we’ll see how it goes. We do want to expand on DC Universe, and we felt this is a very organic way to get there.”

The Flash origin episode in Arrow, written by Berlanti, Kreisberg and Johns as stated below, will be treated as a back-door pilot for a potential Flash series.

In a way, this is better than a purely Flash pilot: As an episode of Arrow, we’ll get to see it even if The Flash isn’t picked up as a series.

As for that Flash movie, Pedowitz didn’t mention any dates, but he did say there is “no conflict” between the movie studio and TV studio’s plans. THR states that “Berlanti will direct and pen the screenplay alongside Chris Brancato, Michael Green, Johns and Guggenheim.” Newsarama speculates that the “no conflict” remark and the creative team overlap might imply a connection between the TV world of Arrow and The Flash and DC’s slowly-developing movie universe.

UPDATE 2: IGN has a little background on how Flash ended up on Arrow.

Also, the op/ed pieces are starting to flow. Newsarama suggests that Flash should bridge the TV and movie universes, linking Arrow to Man of Steel, Superman/Batman and Justice League. The Mary Sue discusses the missed opportunity of Amazon, which has been put on hold at the same time. Forbes looks at the TV/movie decision (as well as the Flash/Wonder Woman decision) from a business and branding perspective.

UPDATE 3: More information has surfaced in a second Hollywood Reporter article. Barry Allen will appear in episodes 8, 9 and 20 of Arrow season 2, each of which will be written by Berlanti, Kreisberg and Johns, and directed by David Nutter. Episode 20 will be the backdoor pilot for The Flash.

“When we first meet Barry Allen, he’s just a forensic scientist … an ordinary man,” Kreisberg said, stressing the character, like Amell’s vigilante, will be grounded in reality and as realistic as possible. The first two episodes will see the character in Oliver’s home of Starling City, with the 20th providing a window to see Barry in the Flash’s world.

They note that adding superpowers to the mix changes the situation for Arrow, saying that “There will be extraordinary events in the world…” They’ll also be highlighting the contrast between the upbeat Barry Allen and the more serious Oliver Queen.

And finally:

Johns reiterated that the Justice League member will be seen as the Flash — complete with his trademark red costume and not a poor imitation. Added Kreisberg: “No sweat suits or strange code names; he will be The Flash.”

Casting has begun for the role.

Original Story:

Surprise! According to Deadline, CW will discuss plans for a Flash TV series today, possibly spinning off from a guest spot on Arrow. (via CBR.)

The pilot will reportedly be written by Greg Berlanti and Andrew Kreisberg (Arrow), and Geoff Johns, who I imagine needs no introduction to readers of this site.

Now, keep in mind this is still rumor — just last week, The Hollywood Reporter stated that DC was going to announce a Flash and Justice League movie at Comic-Con to follow Batman/Superman, but that announcement never happened.

It’s possible, though, that THR had their wires crossed, or that DC Entertainment’s plans were in flux, and the reason that the Flash movie wasn’t announced is that it was really a Flash TV show.

Of course, even if it is true, lots of pilots don’t get picked up as series.

Depending on how you count Smallville’s Bart Allen (he was originally billed as The Flash, but when he actually took a code name it was Impulse) or Jay Garrick’s helmet, it’s been 23 years since the Flash appeared in an official live-action production, the 1990 Flash TV series starring John Wesley Shipp.

Preview Up for Flash Annual #2

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Comic Vine has a 7-page preview of Flash Annual #2, on sale next week.

Find out how The Flash and Green Lantern first met when a case they teamed up together to solve years ago rears its head again in the present! It involves a foe neither of them can defeat on their own, and they might not have much luck together either! The outcome of this will affect The Flash for years to come… Plus, a backup story by Nicole Dubuc (the Young Justice cartoon)!

Written by: Brian Buccellato
Backup Written by: Nicole Dubuc
Art by: Sami Basri
Backup Art by: Cully Hamner
Cover by: Francis Manapul

Flash Film Date Announced at SDCC (or not)

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The big news out of Comic-Con on Saturday is the announcement of a Flash film. As described by The Hollywood Reporter, a Flash movie is tentatively planned for 2016, with a Justice League film slated in 2017. There will also be a team-up film starring Superman and Batman, due out in 2015 and directed by Zack Snyder. Henry Cavill will reprise his role as Superman, but it’s not known who will play Batman. And there’s no word yet of actors or scriptwriters for the Flash film.

Finally a possible date for a Flash movie, and he’ll probably be in the Justice League film too! (Otherwise there would be no point to making the Flash film first.) Are you excited? What do you hope to see in both movies?

Edited to add: It seems I may have jumped the gun, as according to Bleeding Cool the film has not been officially announced. Only The Hollywood Reporter’s “sources” have said so at this point. That’s…kind of a kick in the pants, and mea culpa. That said, Bleeding Cool notes that just because it wasn’t announced today doesn’t mean the rumours are false, so fingers crossed.

SDCC Day Two

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DC held an All Access panel on Thursday at Comic-Con, and Flash co-writer Brian Buccellato was among the panelists. He and Geoff Johns talked a bit about the Flash title and upcoming Rogues Rebellion limited series.

Buccellato said that we’ll soon learn the identity of the Reverse-Flash (more on that later), and stated that the Flash has to protect Iris from him because she hasn’t manifested powers “yet” — which is an interesting tease.

As reported by CBR,

“The Rogues, they’re going to rebel against something,” joked Buccellato. “They’re about stealing, the score, the job. They want to drink some beers at the end of the day and know they stole something really, really expensive.”

“Brian and I have gotten together a lot to talk about this,” said Johns. “I think they have a great take on the Rogues, but something happens in Forever Evil, but not all the villains are excited about it. It’s like the new boss is worse than the old boss.”

Rogues Rebellion is a five-issue miniseries that Johns likened to The Warriors.

DC also released some preview pages today, which have since been posted at CBR. One page appears to be from Rogues Rebellion and another from the main Flash title, and you are warned about possible major spoilers on the Flash page: it appears to reveal the identity of the Reverse-Flash. However, Newsarama reported that Buccellato says the page “may be a spoiler, or may be a misdirection”, so perhaps not everything is as it seems. All the same, keep that in mind before deciding whether to view the page. You can see both pages after the cut.

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