The Flash Movie: You Have No Idea the Horror that Awaits

What a fuckin mess:

The Flash, as it was originally conceived and shot, ended on the courthouse steps with Supergirl, played by Sasha Calle, and Batman, played by Michael Keaton, who was already featured throughout the movie as a returned Batman. It was meant to highlight that Barry did not reset the timeline as he thought he did. It was an ending that was screen tested several times, one that reversed the deaths of Supergirl and Batman earlier in the film.
However, the movie got caught in the lightning storm that was Discovery’s acquisition of Warner Bros. in 2022. Emmerich and Hamada were ousted, and Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav was on the hunt for an executive to run DC. In the meantime, Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy were installed as Warner Bros. Pictures Group chairpersons and CEOs. They were tasked with overseeing DC in the meantime, and suddenly and certainly not unexpectedly they had their own plans.


A new The Flash ending was conceived. This new version was still on the courthouse steps, but now Calle’s Supergirl was joined by Superman, played by Henry Cavill, and Wonder Woman, played by Gal Gadot. Keaton also remained. De Luca and Abdy believed they were being strategic with the ending. Cavill was going to cameo for DC movie Black Adam and was being teed up to return to the role in a brand new Superman movie. Supergirl was retained because even though the executives were killing the development of a standalone Supergirl movie, they were open to her returning in some form and didn’t want the last image audiences saw of her to be her death at the hands of a supervillain (Michael Shannon’s General Zod).

Meanwhile, the studio was developing a third installment of Wonder Woman with filmmaker Patty Jenkins and star Gadot. This was a nice way to keep Wonder Woman in the cultural conversation. This ending was shot in September involving Miller, Cavill and Gadot as well as Keaton and Calle.

Then came another lightning strike. In November, Zaslav announced that filmmaker James Gunn and producer Peter Safran were to run DC Studios, overseeing all DC film and television efforts. And suddenly and certainly not unexpectedly, they had their own plans.

Knowing they were resetting the DC universe under their own vision, Gunn and Safran saw that having Cavill and Gadot in the new ending was potentially promising something their plans were not going to deliver. One of the first actions the duo took was to scrap the Cavill Superman film, and they parted ways with Jenkins, effectively killing the third Wonder Woman installment.


The filmmakers, according to multiple people associated with the movie, then looked for alternatives but wanted to keep the germ of the idea: Barry Allen thinks all is right, but then has the rug pulled out at the last moment. They also went back to an idea joked about earlier in the filmmaking process: “How many Batmen can we get?” Clooney was brought up as a long-shot, but Gunn and Safran jumped on the notion.



1 ending for Hamada, 1 ending for The Rock, and then one for Gunn. What a way to make a movie.