DC's Flash Movie Delayed Again, Unlikely To Arrive Before 2021

DC fans waiting to see Ezra Miller reprise his role as The Flash from last year's Justice League are going to have wait a while longer. It has been reported that the troubled Flash movie has been delayed once more and is unlikely to hit theaters until 2021.

According to Variety, the movie was expected to commence shooting in March next year ahead of a 2020 release. However, the script is still being worked on, and it is unlikely to be ready in time to hit the production start date. The problem is that star Ezra Miller is also a key member of the Fantastic Beasts series cast and with production on the third Fantastic Beasts movie starting in July, the DC film can't start until late 2019 at the earliest.

The Flash movie has never been formally greenlit and has been through a number of directors and delays since it was first announced back in 2015. Original director Seth Grahame-Smith was replaced by Rick Famuyiwa, who himself quit in 2016, citing "creative differences." Warner then hired Joby Harold to rewrite the entire script, and at one stage, Back to the Future director Robert Zemekis was in talks to direct. In January, Spider-Man: Homecoming writers John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein were announced as directors.

Although it seems unlikely that we'll see the Flash film any time soon, there are plenty of other DC projects in the pipeline. Aquaman, Shazam, and Wonder Woman 1984 are all due over the next 13 months, with the Joker prequel movie now in production as well. Beyond that, Margot Robbie is set to reprise her Suicide Squad role as Harley Quinn in the female supervillain team-up Birds of Prey, which hits theaters in February 2020.

It was also recently reported that James Gunn, who was fired from Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3 in July, is a writing a Suicide Squad movie for DC. A direct sequel to 2015's Suicide Squad was expected to start shooting soon, but it has now been reported that Gunn's script will be "a whole new take" on the story. Although Gunn has only been hired as a writer, it is also possible that he might direct the film.