Yesterday, Rolling Stone reported that in an emergency meeting about Ezra Miller, Warner Bros. decided to hit pause on all the actor’s projects, including the upcoming high profile Flash film, due to their recent behavior.
Miller has had an increasingly bizarre series of outbursts and public alterations, culminating in their arrest in Hilo, Hawaii for disorderly conduct at a bar.
After news of this meeting about Miller got out, fans started debating the future of The Flash, the character they have played in Justice League that was set to get a key DCEU spin-off. And if Warner Bros. is not moving forward with Miller, fans have a very specific idea of who could replace them.
That would be Grant Gustin, the actor who has played the Flash on the CW across eight seasons and 150+ episodes since 2014, and he’s just signed on for a ninth season. Fans are rallying to say Gustin deserves a chance to shine on the big screen with a real, non-CW budget.
Don’t get me wrong, even though I think The Flash has run for about five years too long on the CW, I have always appreciated Grant Gustin’s portrayal of Barry Allen and I think he’s done a great job. With that said, I cannot wrap my head around how strange it would be to port the actor over to the DCEU for a Flash film.
Seeing Grant Gustin alone zapped into the DCEU to play a different version of a character he’s already played for eight years and a hundred hours is just extremely weird to process. This would not be a “CW Flash movie,” this would be the actor being slotted into the Flash film that already has a clear direction within the DCEU, and he would be leaving his CW cast and storylines behind.
And would he portray the character in the same way? Would Allen have to try to emulate Miller’s younger, more jittery Flash? Or would he be playing CW Barry Allen just without the rest of his cast there?
None of this makes any real sense from a casting perspective to me, as much as I like the actor himself (and don’t cry for Gustin who is making $200,000 per Flash episode in season 9). I think perhaps once upon a time the DCEU could have opted to embrace the Arrowverse, but that time has passed, and that’s not what this would be now. It’s much easier to imagine replacing Miller with another young actor for a fresh start.
It does seem clear that Ezra Miller needs legitimate help, which I think needs to be the main priority once his legal issues are sorted. But it also stands to reason they may not have a future within the DCEU going forward due to their behavior thus far. I just don’t think I can be convinced is that the guy who has already played The Flash for more than a decade is the only choice to replace Miller, and I just don’t imagine this manifesting, no matter how much some fans may want to see it.
