Earlier this year, The Flash delivered a loose cinematic adaptation of the 2011 storyline Flashpoint, with Ezra Miller’s Barry Allen changing the timeline after going back in time to save his mother from being murdered. The feature arrived nearly a decade after it was officially announced as a DC Extended Universe installment, with the following years seeing it pass through the hands of multiple filmmakers. As it turns out though, back when Zack Snyder was still working on this superhero franchise, he’d intended not only for Flashpoint to be a separate movie from The Flash, but also have it factor heavily into his overall DCEU saga.
This information comes from Jay Oliva, a storyboard artist who worked on DCEU movies Man of Steel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Wonder Woman and Justice League (both versions). Additionally, he directed the animated movie Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox and lent his artistic talents to the first four seasons of The Flash TV show, so when The Flash movie started being put together, it’s understandable he was looped into the creative process. As Oliva informed Inverse, back when Rick Famuyiwa was attached to direct The Flash, the flick wasn’t supposed to be a Flashpoint adaptation, but rather lay the groundwork for this epic storyline, specifically with the yellow-garbed speedster who’s been Barry Allen’s arch-nemesis in the comics for decades, Eobard Thawne, a.k.a. Professor Zoom. Oliva explained:
Rick's movie was laying the groundwork for Zoom as the big baddy of the DC Universe. It was Professor Zoom pulling the strings because he had come from the future to basically fuck with Barry. In the Flash movies, Zoom would be the villain in the background. But also in the ancillary other films, you would see some of the influences of Zoom on the rest of the Justice League.
Professor Zoom gained more importance to the Flash mythos in The Flash: Rebirth miniseries from the late 2000s, where it was retconned that he went back in time and murdered Nora Allen when Barry Allen was a child. A few years later, Zoom was present in Flashpoint, and while he didn’t end up being the cause of this alternate timeline’s creation, he nonetheless used it as yet another opportunity to torment Barry. According to Jay Oliva, not only would The Flash film trilogy have seeded teases of Zoom throughout, but so would other DCEU movies.
In the years since Justice League’s theatrical release, and particularly once Zack Snyder’s Justice League was made available to Max subscribers, the public has learned various details about Snyder’s scrapped Justice League sequels, which would have featured Darkseid as the big bad. However, regarding the DCEU as a whole, it turns out Justice League 3 wasn’t going to be the grand finale to Snyder’s saga, but rather a Flashpoint movie intended to reboot the franchise. Oliva continued:
At the ending of Zack's Darkseid quadrilogy, or whatever, we would end up with a Justice League Unlimited version of the Snyder-verse. And then you flip it. You do Flashpoint Paradox. Everybody who's friends are now enemies, and it's a world that you don't want to live in. You can reboot the universe and introduce a new cast that way. Because after 10 years, the actors need to go onto something else.
Of course, the DCEU as Zack Snyder had envisioned it started to change following the release of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and even more so after he left Justice League in the postproduction process and Joss Whedon was tapped to helm the reshoots. Ultimately the DCEU shaped out to be a much different beast, but that era will come to an end later this year once Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom comes out. After that, the new DC Universe spearheaded by DC Studios heads James Gunn and Peter Safran will get underway, with the animated Creature Commands series being released to Max sometime in 2024, and then Superman: Legacy kicking off the film side of this new continuity in summer 2025.
You can learn what other DC projects are on the way, both DC Universe-connected and otherwise, by looking through our upcoming DC movies and upcoming DC TV shows guides. Be sure to also read what Jay Oliva had to say about how Ben Affleck’s version of The Batman would have explored 80 years worth of the Caped Crusader’s mythos.
