The Flash 2018: What Do We Know?

Everybody's talking about The Flash. With a hit series on The CW and a movie on the way in 2018, announced as part of a major slate of releases from Warner Bros., the Scarlet Speedster has the attention of Hollywood and fandom.

But...what do we actually know about his upcoming movie? Very little.

Among today's announcements from Warner Bros. CEO Kevin Tsujihara was the revelation that Ezra Miller will play The Flash, coupled with the news that the character will have his own feature film in 2018.

Along with The Flash, Aquaman will play out in between director Zack Snyder's planned Justice League Part One and Part Two, and will thus presumably pick up threads from DC's first superhero mega-team-up and lead into the story's conclusion.

Trades have reported that the character in the movie will be Barry Allen, which stands to reason since he's the one in the comics. No sources have been cited for that, though, so it could just be an educated guess.

Of course, he's also the one on TV, which could create some brand confusion if the series is still on the air in four years. That doesn't seem entirely unlikely given the fact that The Flash has matched or exceeded the performance of Joss Whedon and ABC's Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. in its first two weeks -- despite airing on The CW.

Wally West would be an option -- he was The Flash in the hit animated series that shaped a lot of contemporary perceptions about the Justice League -- but in the comics, he's now black (long story). He'll likely be that way on The Flash (TV show) too, based on comments from executive producer Greg Berlanti. It would be jarring to have him suddenly be white in the movies...although that's not stopped them before when it came to things like a black Perry White (he's white in the comics). Other options exist, of course, but none of them are as marketable as Barry and Wally.

Navigating a feature film based on the same character as a hit live-action TV series could be interesting to watch play out; will they take certain characters off the board for the show to save them for the movie? Warner Bros. has a history of doing things like that.