The DC movie universe is a bit… troubled, to say the least. It has had a few films that haven't exactly wowed audiences besides a vocal minority of fans who praise them from the rooftops. They've made a few missteps here and there but there may be a way to right those wrongs.
One of the most iconic DC storylines is Flashpoint, a story which sees Flash traveling through an alternate timeline filled with major differences. Batman isn't Bruce Wayne, it's Thomas Wayne, Bruce died instead of his father and Martha Wayne ended up becoming the Joker instead of whoever would've donned the face paint and purple suit. There's a number of other differences both big and small but that's perhaps one of the biggest changes, not only that but Thomas Wayne's Batman is a ruthless, gun toating crime fighter with red eyes in his cowl. This storyline will soon be adapted into a live-action movie with Ezra Miller, Ben Affleck, Gal Gadot, and a bunch of other actors who will reprise their roles.
The Flashpoint film may find a way to canonically erase some of the mistakes made by DC by using time travel wizardry and the butterfly effect and what not but more to the point, it could potentially find a way to give Ben Affleck that "graceful exit" he's been talking about.
Up until now, we haven't had any concrete details about the Flashpoint movie but DC's golden boy, Geoff Johns, spoke with Entertainment Weekly about the movie and stated that Batman will be in the movie amongst other things that they "couldn't do anywhere else".
"There’s elements in it that we’re going to be playing into that we couldn’t do anywhere else. The scale of it, the Batman story of it all."
So, this may hopefully mean Affleck will stick around long enough for us to see him perform an emotional scene that we won't spoil by Flashpoint fans probably remember fondly. We may also see The Walking Dead star Jeffrey Dean Morgan don the cape and cowl himself since he played Thomas Wayne in Batman v. Superman last year. The star even expressed interest in playing the alternate Batman once before. Although, the impact of a gun-wielding Batman may not be as strong given how they introduced this iteration of The Dark Knight in BVS.
The Flashpoint movie is a bit up in the air right now, though. It seems DC is waiting to see how Justice League performs to fully ramp up development on it because right now, the movie has no director and seemingly no writers unless Geoff Johns is penning it which would make sense since he wrote the original comic. A Flash movie, in general, has been in development hell for years with multiple directors and writers stepping in and out at various points with no one being able to make it work.
The Flash himself, Ezra Miller, seems to be pretty confident in the movie, though. “The development of the project has been a little Barry Allen-like in its mercurial tendencies,” Miller said to Entertainment Weekly “But it looks more promising and more exciting than any of the other stages of development that we’ve been in.”
Miller also spoke of how excited he is about the possibilities for the DC universe if the Flashpoint movie does manage to hit the silver screen.
"What fans understand when they hear Flashpoint would be almost like hearing a word like ‘Crisis.’ We start to understand that our precious DC universe will inevitably be torn asunder to an endless, headache-inducing fabric of multiversality. The DC Hyper-Extended Multiverse, as I plan to call it. Quote me!"
The Flash will make his feature film appearance alongside Aquaman and Cyborg in Justice League this Friday, November 17th.
