If the DC Cinematic Universe has been chugging towards its Justice League centerpiece like a well-oiled machine, then The Flash solo movie is the one janky mechanism that keeps coming out of joint and necessitating repairs. Warner Bros. executives have been unable to pin down a creative team for the fastest man on the planet’s moment in the spotlight, having already lost original director Seth Grahame-Smith (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies) as well as replacement director Rick Famuyiwa (Dope) just this past Halloween. As the search continues for a director who won’t end up with ‘creative differences’ like the others — that’s movie slang for “refused to bend to the will of the studio” — Warner Bros. is ensuring that no trace of Famuyiwa will be left in the finished product.

Variety announced last night that Warner Bros. had called in the studio’s new golden boy Joby Harold to do what’s called a page-one rewrite, a top-to-bottom overhaul of the script. During his brief tenure as the prospective director of The Flash, Famuyiwa took a pass at the script, but the studio didn’t like the “direction” he had taken it in and wanted to bring on a more servile studio-friendly scribe. Harold’s last screenwriting credit was for the Razzie-nominated 2007 thriller Awake, but WB has kept him busy lately as the pen behind upcoming franchise pictures King Arthur: The Legend of the Sword, a new Robin Hood, and a Twilight Zone movie.

Ezra Miller will still star as the super-speedster in the upcoming solo film as well as Justice League, with Kiersey Clemons and Billy Crudup confirmed for the cast as well. The production was originally shooting for a release date in March 2018, but as one Variety commenter so astutely put it, “Three writers in a year? Good luck, buddy.”

 

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