THE FLASH Almost Completely Rewrote Bruce Wayne’s Batman Origin Story
Bruce Wayne without Batman? That’s a pretty wild concept, but John Francis Daley says an early version of The Flash nearly went there.
Before the DC movie ultimately brought Michael Keaton back as Batman, Daley revealed that one version of the script featured an alternate Bruce Wayne who never became the Dark Knight at all.
Instead of spending his life fighting crime in Gotham City, this Bruce grew up to become an aimless billionaire party boy. Daley explained the abandoned idea in an interview with The Playlist:
“We had a version where Bruce Wayne never became Batman. And so he was just this sort of billionaire party boy who’s aimless and doesn’t know what to do with his life.”
That would have been a huge change to one of the most famous superhero origin stories ever created. Bruce Wayne’s childhood trauma and the murder of his parents traditionally drive him toward becoming Batman. This version apparently imagined a reality where his life took another path entirely.
It’s also a interesting and fun multiverse idea. Instead of simply introducing another actor wearing the Batman suit, The Flash could have confronted Barry Allen with a version of Bruce Wayne who never answered the call to become Gotham’s vigilante.
Of course, that isn’t the movie audiences eventually got. The Flash instead leaned heavily into nostalgia by bringing Keaton back as an older version of Batman, complete with the Batcave, Batmobile, classic suit, and plenty of callbacks to his previous DC movies.
Daley has had his hands in several major geek-friendly projects over the years. In 2023, the same year The Flash arrived in theaters, he co-wrote and co-directed Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, which earned plenty of love from fans and critics and delivered a decent box office run.
His other writing credits include Spider-Man: Homecoming, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2, and The Incredible Burt Wonderstone.
Daley also worked on the screenplay for A Minecraft Movie, although he ultimately went uncredited, and served as an executive producer on the TV series Hysteria!.
It’s hard not to wonder what that unused The Flash concept might have looked like. A Bruce Wayne with all the money, privilege, and baggage but none of the Batman mission could have given the movie a completely different spin on the character.
Instead, we got Keaton back in the cape and cowl. Considering how much Batman history The Flash was already juggling, the billionaire-party-boy Bruce Wayne will remain one of those strange alternate DC movies that only exists somewhere in the multiverse of abandoned scripts.