The Flash Movie Now Eyeing 2021 Release Date Following Production Start Delay

The Scarlet Speedster isn't living up to his name. 

As reported by Variety, the upcoming Flash standalone movie has hit a delay. Studio Warner Bros. just pushed back the production start date for the untitled standalone movie, which stars Ezra Miller as Barry Allen. 

The outlet notes that while Warner Bros. hasn't actually given the movie the green light yet and never stamped it with an official release date, the studio expected to get the project behind cameras in March 2019. The film's co-director John Francis Daley hinted in June 2018 that "if all goes well," the movie would hit the silver screen in 2020, presumably in either the February 14, 2020 or the June 5, 2020 slot Warner Bros. previously carved out. Clearly, things haven't gone as smoothly as Daley had hoped.

So, what's the cause of the hold-up? Apparently, screenwriter Joby Harold. He's still tinkering away at the script, continuing to make changes to it as we speak, and Warner Bros. reportedly feels that there simply won't be "enough time to get the script in shape" to begin filming in the spring. 

Another issue is that lead actor Miller has a concurrent commitment to the Fantastic Beasts franchise, which is gearing up to film its third installment, the follow-up to this November's Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, in July 2019. There's no way that Miller could use his superhuman speed to save the world in the untitled Flash movie at the same time he stars as the Obscurial American wizard Credence Barebone in Fantastic Beasts 3. Trying to make that happen would be an impossible feat for Warner Bros., and would cause a major headache for Miller. 

Thus, the solution Warner Bros. came to is to delay the start of production on the Flash movie until late 2019. With the pushed-back production commencement, the movie is now eyeing a 2021 release date. Neither the new filming start date or debut window are set in stone, so things could end up changing in the future. 

The Flash solo movie has been a long time coming, with Warner Bros. tapping Spider-Man: Homecoming screenwriters Daley and Jonathan Goldstein as directors back in January 2017. Prior to the Spidey writers boarding the project, both The Lego Batman Movie scribe Seth Grahame-Smith and Dope filmmaker Rick Famuyiwa were at the helm at separate points in time. Grahame-Smith wound up leaving the film in February 2016, citing creative differences, and Famuyiwa jumped ship that October for the very same reason. 

A delay like this is disappointing but not entirely surprising, as it seems like just a typical day in the not-quite-paradise that is the DC Extended Universe. Hopefully, the wait for the Flash movie will be worth it. And who knows? Maybe the Miller-starrer might be the film to mark a new era of the DCEU following this year's Aquaman; 2019's Shazam!, Wonder Woman 1984, and Joker; and 2020's Cyborg, Green Lantern Corps, and Suicide Squad 2.