‘Aquaman’ And ‘Shazam’ Sequels Delayed, ‘The Flash’ Future In Question

Another day, another change to Warner Bros. Discovery’s plans. Director James Wan’s sequel Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is moving to a Christmas Day release in 2023, gifting its March 17th release date to filmmaker David F. Sandberg’s own super-sequel Shazam! Fury of the Gods. Those delays raise questions about the future of The Flash, helmed by Andy Muschietti.

Word on The Flash’s future might drop at any minute, or might not drop at all this year, since it’s hard to predict what’s going to happen lately when it comes to DC properties. But until new information arrives, what we know right now is that Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom has two different scenes featuring Batman — one version starring Ben Affleck’s version of the Caped Crusader, the other featuring the return of Michael Keaton’s incarnation of the Dark Knight — and which of those scenes appears in the movie depends a lot on what the studio plans to do with The Flash.

Originally, Keaton’s Batman was set to take over duties as Batman in the DCEU continuity-changing story of The Flash, replacing Affleck. This would set up Keaton’s appearance in the now-cancelled Batgirl and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom.

So The Flash was supposed to hit theaters ahead of the Aquaman sequel, but when Lost Kingdom got moved to an earlier release date than The Flash, Keaton’s scenes in Lost Kingdom had to be replaced with scenes of Affleck instead. Why? Because Keaton’s Batman won’t enter the DCEU until the events of The Flash, so it wouldn’t make sense for him to appear in Aquaman’s sequel first.

Now, however, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom has moved to December 25th, 2023. The Flash meanwhile still sits on its June 23rd release, six months before Jason Momoa’s Atlantean superhero retakes the big screen.

What this means is, there are five possible outcomes now:

1. The Flash still releases in 2023 as planned (either in June, or perhaps moved forward to February as the “event” film WBD has penciled in) and Keaton’s Batman replaces Affleck’s Batman in Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (as was originally planned and filmed);
2. The Flash moves to a 2024 release date, after the release of the Aquaman sequel, so Keaton still takes over as Batman going forward;
3. Keaton’s Batman is dropped from all future DCEU films, and his appearance in The Flash reverts to a one-time role, and Affleck remains the DCEU Batman;
4. The Flash is cancelled and WBD takes a big tax write-off, Keaton’s Batman doesn’t appear in the DCEU at all, and Affleck remains the DCEU Batman;
5. The events of Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom can be edited to be set prior to the events of The Flash, but at the end of the film Keaton’s Batman can arrive so we know everything has caught up to the events of The Flash (so the Aquaman sequel features both versions of Batman as an added selling point, which perhaps was secretly the plan all along and we just didn’t know it).

The simplest and therefore perhaps most likely answer is number two, a simple reshuffling of The Flash’s release date just like the other films. The next-simplest answer would be number one, since it’s the cheapest remaining option and also easy to do in the editing room, since they’ve already got the scenes filmed and can swap them out again.

Numbers four and five on that list are the least likely, because they are the most complicated and costs without providing enough benefits to justify the complications and costs. They’re also the least-good options in terms of the results for the films themselves and the DC brand overall.

Number three, which posits Keaton being dropped after The Flash and some editing to make it a one-shot appearance, would probably necessitate some additional footage being shot, which is generally contrary to the cost-cutting approach we’ve seen from new WBD leadership so far. On the other hand, that would make it possible to release only the remaining few finished DCEU movies, plus a couple that are already far enough into production, and then declare it a wrap on this DCEU.

They could still do that at any point, of course, but this iteration (number three) simplifies the storytelling in the films and the decision-making at the studio. Under this approach, they basically don’t even have to think about the current DCEU any more, and can focus almost entirely on deciding how to reboot everything (and how to continue making sure Matt Reeves gets to do whatever he wants with the Batman world, because that’s a goldmine and could be the beating heart of hope for DC’s cinematic future at this point).

The option to cancel The Flash entirely doesn’t seem realistic and I don’t consider it a serious contender. The amount of money spent on The Flash and the amount of money the studio stands to make — especially if word from test screenings can be trusted, which suggests the film is a tremendous crowd-pleaser likely to perform well at the box office — are too much to just cast it aside at this point. I know the scandals and criminal charges against Ezra Miller lead some to conclude the film’s box office could be lower than hoped, but regardless of whatever any of us think about the situation, it’s unlikely that any of the news surrounding Miller would hurt the box office if reviews and word of mouth are good, that’s just the bottom line in these situations.

Mind you, I’m not advocating for any particular option on this list, especially not number three. I was slow to warm up to the whole “multiverse means we pull in actors from wherever” approach, but I’ve been won over at this point and had grown eager to see Keaton back in the cowl. It got toward an idea I had for a very long time about DC movies and how to put them all together in a shared world — Batman fighting alongside aliens in space always felt off to me, so I long advocated for keeping him away from that, or if he had to be involved go the Kingdom Come route and have him as an elderly Batman who is mostly a team-leader type who only suits up in heavy armor occasionally.

But before we get to what I think will likely happen, let’s explore some interesting questions raised by today’s news of changing release dates and the continuity issues it highlights…

Was Batgirl cancelled in part because the new studio leadership decided not to proceed with the plan to reintroduce Keaton as Batman? Was Affleck’s return for scenes in Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom part of a larger plan to bring him back to the DCEU longterm?

Or was Affleck brought in simply because the new leadership anticipates bringing the existing DCEU to a complete close after releasing the remaining projects that are completed or already filming and cancelling everything else? If they aren’t going to proceed with additional films utilizing Keaton’s Batman, maybe they prefer to streamline the narrative to make the films more self-contained.

The tax write-off for Batgirl could be either an added bonus of tying up loose ends and shutting this DCEU down, or perhaps taking the tax write-off meant losing one of the Keaton films, and so reduced the value of that whole plan going forward (since an eventual reboot of the DC films was coming anyway), which in turn made them decide to use the Affleck footage for Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom and make edits to The Flash to contain Keaton’s Batman within that one film. It could be that once they started discussing options, the points about streamlining to close up this DCEU plus other points about the tax write-off were a one-two punch that reinforce one another.

However, maybe The Flash is going to move, too, and they just haven’t finalized a new release date yet. Or perhaps they have, but don’t want to announce it yet because they’re waiting for some other reason — such as seeing where certain other studios’ films get scheduled, or to see if the negative news about The Flash star Ezra Miller dies down so that announcing the new release date doesn’t get covered in tandem with news of Miller’s personal legal woes.

So, what’s going to happen? As I noted earlier, the easiest answer is they’ll just move The Flash to a date in early 2024, and retain Keaton as Batman for future projects (until the DCEU eventually is rebooted, under whatever new 10-year plan is suggested by the next overseer of the properties). Or, a nearly-equally simple outcome would be the choice to leave The Flash on its 2023 release date and just insert the Michael Keaton Batman scene back into Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom.

Either of those outcomes means questions about Keaton and Affleck are easily resolved, because everything will remain on track for the planned hand-off and the films will all line up as originally intended and proceed without need for additional decisions that complicate things, leaving the studio free to focus (at last) on getting someone to oversee the future of DC properties and carry out a reboot of the DCEU.

So these two being the simplest, most obvious, and most cost-effective options, I think one of these is likely to happen. Any of the other options would cause significant additional upset to the DCEU at a terrible time, without enough benefits to make any of them better options than these two simpler ones.

Unless, of course, a major driving factor is that studio heads don’t want Michael Keaton’s Batman to return full-time. In that case, they need to have a deal made with Ben Affleck to return regularly, or recast the Affleck Batman (i.e. a new actor but it’s the same version of Batman). And this would seem like an odd set of decisions and motivations, considering they plan to reboot it all soon anyway — so if things do go this route, then I’ll suspect whatever “reboot” they plan will actually just be yet another reconfiguration of the existing DCEU with some new set of marching orders.

With WBD stock taking huge hits (it’s at $13+ per share today, down from $24+ in late-April) and word of continued serious financial difficulties, they need to make some big moves that instill confidence in their plans for DC properties, and avoid situations that look increasingly chaotic or like they’re just offering the same solutions dressed up differently. I think that means they need to commit soon to whether they’re going to keep this iteration of the DCEU going beyond the next few years, or end all of it (except Reeves’ Batman franchise) and build a brand new DCEU from scratch.

Whichever it is, Warner needs to at least have that much of their plan in place and be able to say so, or risk a foreseeable future of skeptical headlines and fan pessimism.