CinemaCon 2023 will host premiere of DC Films’s slate-clearing ‘The Flash’

Sin City will transform into Speed City when “The Flash” makes its debut there on April 25. The DC Films project has been in the can for a while, and has reportedly undergone a few changes while Warner Bros. Discovery decided just what in the heck to do with its DC Films slate (e.g. hire James Gunn and Peter Safran to come up with a new game plan as heads of this key division of the company.)

Since the Andy Muschetti-directed film wrapped in 2021, there’s also been the issue of star Ezra Miller’s multiple arrests and public outbursts. In late 2022 a representative for the actor said they had entered a treatment facility for “complex mental health issues.”

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That said, James Gunn calls “The Flash” one of the best superhero movies he’s ever seen, and the character’s universe-hopping powers via the Speed Force lends itself nicely to any retcons the brain trust has in mind. (Indeed, DC Comics’s first introduction of the Multiverse stems from a comic from 1961 in which The Flash of Earth, Barry Allen, met The Flash of Earth-2, Jay Garrick, who was actually the first Flash and, oh, look, this is already confusing.) The timeline-hopping Flash also enables the film to include multiple Batmen, which means we’ll see both Ben Affleck and Michael Keaton in the project as well as, to be sure, some other surprises that’ll be spoiled within sixty seconds of the CinemaCon presentation. 

“The Flash” won’t be in theaters until June 16, but it’s a smart place to bow. The bulk of the audience at CinemaCon are exhibitors and their orbiting industries (e.g. reps for a new kind of popcorn salt) so there is an inherent interest to be receptive to a big spectacle picture, even if it comes with some baggage. Last year Paramount showed off its success “Top Gun: Maverick” a month prior to its release. If you can believe such a thing, this was a project, similarly kept in the can for quite some time, that some felt skeptical about before Tom Cruise and Joeseph Kosinski destroyed the box office like Pete “Maverick” Mitchell did to “the enemy’s” mountain-hidden weapons bunker. The film is now up for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

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