Zack Snyder on Why He Never Considered Grant Gustin’s THE FLASH For JUSTICE LEAGUE
When Ezra Miller was cast in the role of Barry Allen, a.k.a. The Flash, in Zack Snyder’s Justice League film, a lot of fans were pissed off that Grant Gustin didn’t get the job. As many of you already know, Gustin plays the Scarlet Speedster in the series The Flash, and he’s awesome.
During an interview with the New York Daily News, Snyder revealed that he never even considered using Gustin as The Flash. Why? One reason is that the tone of his TV version didn't match up with what he wanted to do with Justice League. So he hired Miller, who is a great actor, and I’m sure once people see how he handles the character, fans will be a little bit more at ease. Snyder said:
"I just don't think [Gustin] was a good fit. I’m very strict with this universe and I just don’t see a version where...that [tone is] not our world.”
The Flash is expected to make a brief cameo in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, but we really won’t get to see him in action until Justice League. There's another interesting reason Snyder offers for leaving Gustin out of the role, and that's because of DC's multiverse.
“Even if Grant Gustin is my favorite guy in the world and he’s very good, we made a commitment to the multiverse [idea], so it’s just not a thing that’s possible.”
So apparently these films that Snyder is making take place in the same multiverse as the TV series, but they don’t take place in the same universe. This is something Geoff Johns has talked about in the past, telling BuzzFeed in a previous interview:
“Well, Arrow and Flash are the same universe, and we get a lot of great story out of that — especially when we have episodes that cross them over, but that’s also where our superhero universe lives. We look at it as the multiverse. We have our TV universe and our film universe, but they all co-exist. For us, creatively, it’s about allowing everyone to make the best possible product, to tell the best story, to do the best world. Everyone has a vision and you really want to let the visions shine through. I think the characters are iconic enough.“
This completely makes sense to me, especially when it comes to the DC Comic Universe. It gives them the perfect excuse for anything they do with these properties.