Last weekend DC FanDome revealed a first look at Andy Muschietti‘s The Flash, a film that has been through development Hell and back again, with a piece of concept art that teased a new look for Ezra Miller‘s Barry Allen, while teaming Miller’s Flash with Batman. Not just any Batman, though: the image featured Miller’s Flash standing alongside Michael Keaton‘s Batman, last seen in 1992’s Batman Returns. It is rumored that Keaton will not only return for The Flash — which will also feature Ben Affleck’s Batman, and which will formally introduce the multiverse concept to DC’s films — but a number of other DC projects, too.
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The image got fans buzzing, as it was designed to do, but it was, of course, just a single image — and a fairly dark one at that, hiding many details that will likely show up in the eventual film. Artist George Evangelista set out to fix that, by designing his own piece of fan art mashing up Miller’s Flash — complete with his new costume — and Keaton’s Batman.
You can see the image, which Evangelista dropped on Twitter, below.
No one could have guessed in 1992, when Batman Returns hit theaters and fans were still years away from a successful comic book movie not based on the Dark Knight, that Keaton might still be wearing that costume thirty years on (The Flash is expected to hit theaters in 2022), much less that he would be starring alongside The Flash, a character whose first live-action adaptation had just been cancelled by CBS at the time. Ironically, the star of 1990’s The Flash, John Wesley Shipp, reprised that role last year in The CW’s “Crisis on Infinite Earths” crossover, in which Ezra Miller’s Flash also had a cameo.
Rumor has it The Flash will incorporate elements of Flashpoint into its story — a tale in which Barry Allen travels back in time to prevent his mother’s murder, but ultimately ends up doing serious damage to reality. By the time it was fixed, reality settled in a little differently, leading to a line-wide reboot of DC Comics’s publishing line in 2011.
With at least two Batmen and the official introduction of a multiverse (plus the apparent confirmation during FanDome that Miller’s Flash will remember the events of “Crisis on Infinite Earths”), it seems at least some of DC’s films will be existing in a radically different status quo following the events of The Flash.
