The Options For WB With Ezra Miller And ‘The Flash’

By now, you’ve no doubt figured out why Ezra Miller is trending day after day. It’s because of what can only be described as a “Hawaiian crime spree” where bizarre, often violent behavior from Miller has resulted in several arrests and restraining orders, and one serious, disputed charge of grooming a minor. Now they’re quite literally…on the run from police, deleting their Instagram after taunting their inability to be located.

They’re also the star of the massively budget WB movie, The Flash, out a year from now in June 2023.

WB has to be tearing its hair out trying to figure out what to do here, as the options, though vast, are complicated, and there are few good ones. The potential options:

Scrap the movie – Keep in mind, this movie is already filmed. Like, it’s not a concept, it’s done shooting, so this would be a huge loss for WB if they just didn’t release it. Almost impossible to see this happening.

Reshoot the movie with a new lead – While it may not outright double the cost, picking a new actor to replace Miller (Dylan O’Brien, anyone?) and having to reshoot enormous chunks of the film to cut Miller out and replace them with someone new would still be hugely expensive.

Digitally replace Miller – Okay, so, you go all 2022 and use digital technology to deepfake your way out of the problem, cutting out Miller where you can, and instead of reshoots, digitally replacing them with another actor. It sounds almost impossible to do effectively, and it probably would be. This is a studio that could not properly erase Henry Cavill’s mustache from his face. But I mean, these are extraordinary times, so who knows.

Cut Miller down, boost other roles – We know that The Flash movie is not just about Barry Allen, but also serves as a gateway to old heroes, namely Michael Keaton’s Batman, and introduces new ones like Supergirl. In theory, you could cut Miller’s role down in their own movie quite a bit, add in cut footage from other cast members or have those be the reshoots that are done, to boost their presence further.

Keep everything intact, cut Miller from marketing – No real Miller edits to the movie itself, but you change the marketing. Obviously Miller is probably not going to be doing traditional press rounds for the movie, but even in like, future trailers and posters, you cut their presence down or just keep them masked in the suit as often as possible.

Given that a large scale overhaul of DC as whole likely is coming from WB fairly soon, I don’t think it ultimately matters what happens with Miller as Barry Allen past this one film, as it always seemed like a longshot that they would be DC’s version of The Flash indefinitely. Even if they do want to keep DCEU continuity, The Flash dipping into the multiverse would be the perfect avenue for recasting anyway.

As you can see, there are really no good options here. I would imagine WB is going to opt for the one that costs the least and does the least amount of damage, and I would imagine recasting and reshooting the entire thing is just not in the cards. Again, it’s happened before (to Kevin Spacey, as I recall), but not in a megablockbuster superhero film where the actor has already previously played the role. It’s…complicated. We’ll see what happens in the Ezra Miller saga next, and how that may have a bearing on things.

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