Ever since the announcement that Warner Bros. would be venturing outside the worlds of Batman and Superman to explore more DC properties, starting with Green Lantern, The Flash has been viewed as the next logical character to adapt. It started with an announcement late last year that the project that had been swimming around development hell for years would be hitting the restart button. Then, news came out in February that Greg Berlanti, writer of the previously mentioned Green Lantern, would be serving as director. Edging even closer, Warner Bros., in tandem with a report that the next Sherlock Holmes sequel would come in December 2011, said that they were "nearing" a green light for the project. Now it looks like a team of writers has been hired to script it...maybe.
THR reports that three of the four writers behind Martin Campbell's Green Lantern, Berlanti, Michael Green and Marc Guggenheim, have been offered a deal to write the treatments for both The Flash and Green Lantern 2, with the opportunity to turn one of them into a screenplay. The offer to write the sequel is unprecedented, as there is still more than a year before Ryan Reynolds appears on screen wearing the power ring. Which ever project the team ends up writing the screenplay for, it will be the first project since Warner Bros. and DC restructured their relationship back in September to compete with the Disney/Marvel Studios alliance.
So which would you rather see fast tracked - The Flash or Green Lantern 2? No matter what side you take, this is great news for comic book fans. In order to offer this deal, WB must have some extreme confidence in Green Lantern, and seeing as they are amongst the few people to see what is coming out of that set, fanboys should be pleased. But, getting back to the matter at hand, how exactly does one go about making a decision like this? Do you gamble and hope that everybody falls in love with Reynold's portrayal of the cosmic hero and have a film ready for the following year, or start up a new franchise that fans have been wanting for years?
I'd also like to take this moment to point out that there are people in this universe right now who get to sit back and wait for a studio to tell them if they will be paid for making a Green Lantern movie or get paid for making a Flash movie. Is there a store I can go to so that I can pick up that kind of luck?
