With Man of Steel opening this week, it’s no secret that the future of DC Comics’ super-heroes on screen is tied to the success of the new Superman film. The question, of course, is what form might that future take? With the success of The Avengers, there’s been a lot of talk about a possible Justice League movie, but of course Marvel didn’t launch the Avengers on its own: They launched four solo films featuring different heroes, then brought them together. If “Man of Steel” does well, DC could jump straight into the team movie, or they could do a Marvel-style slow build — and Mike Ryan at Huffington Post suggests that Flash might be the ideal viewpoint character to tie them together.

DC has had a Flash movie officially in development for almost a decade now. Back in 2004, Warner Bros. announced David Goyer was writing a script and would direct. It’s since been through multiple directors and writers. Early treatments would feature both Wally West and Barry Allen, while later treatments focused exclusively on Barry Allen. The last real news came in 2010, when DC announced the Green Lantern script team would be writing a Flash film based on Geoff Johns’ work. Of course when the Green Lantern movie performed less than WB had hoped, everything non-Superman or Batman went on the back burner again. We’ve heard a few rumblings since then, but little else. Everything’s riding on “Man of Steel”: If it succeeds, we can count on more DC movies. If not, we can expect more years of development hell.

But if it does succeed… Continue reading →