Warner Bros.’s big-screen take on The Flash has narrowed down it's search to three directors: Matthew Vaughn, Robert Zemeckis and Sam Raimi have all met in recent weeks and are each strong contenders for the gig.
The trio of directors emerge as Warners is in the final throes of its search for a filmmaker to tackle the Scarlet Speedster after losing Rick Famuyiwa, who made Sundance sensation Dope, in October 2016 over "creative differences.”
Those differences emerged even as casting was ramping up and his departure put Flash on the skids, temporarily shelving production and a release date.
Famuyiwa was the second departure after Seth Grahame-Smith, who had written the script and was slated to make his directorial debut.
The recent search for a Flash director was a closely guarded affair and each of the names rose and fell on studio's heat index even as each had challenges, schedule or otherwise, to overcome. Even Phil Lord and Christopher Miller were re-considered to possibly return to a project for which they wrote a treatment years ago.
The current frontrunner appears to be Back to the Future and Forrest Gump director Zemeckis. He is now focused on a new project, an untitled drama that will star Steve Carell and that will shoot this fall and that appeared to sideline him from the gig. But now some sources say that Warners is willing to wait for him.
on Berg and Geoff Johns are producing Flash, which is working with a new draft by Joby Harold, writer on the studio’s King Arthur: Legend of the Sword.
Vaughn, the filmmaker already deeply experienced in comic book movies with films such as X-Men: First Class and Kingsman: The Secret Service and counts Kick-Ass in his comic book movie repertoire, is readying his latest film, Kingsman: The Golden Circle, for a Sept. 22 release.
Raimi spent the better part of the 2000s working on Columbia's Spider-Man trilogy, which starred Maguire as the Marvel Comics hero along with Kirsten Dunst and James Franco. The second movie, which featured Alfred Molina as villain Dr. Octopus, is considered a landmark in the comic book movie form. The trilogy grossed almost $2.7 billion dollars. The last movie Raimi directed was Oz the Great and Powerful, the 2013 Disney movie that acted as a prequel to Wizard of Oz.
Zemeckis last directed Brad Pitt in the WWII spy drama Allied.
Who is Bob?
Back to the Future? Okay, I'm onboard.
