Director Andy Muschietti has revealed that the original cut for The Flash was four hours long.
The new DC Extended Universe superhero movie stars Ezra Miller as Barry Allen/The Flash. “Worlds collide when the Flash uses his superpowers to travel back in time to change the events of the past,” reads the film’s synopsis. “However, when his attempt to save his family inadvertently alters the future, he becomes trapped in a reality in which General Zod has returned, threatening annihilation. With no other superheroes to turn to, the Flash looks to coax a very different Batman out of retirement and rescue an imprisoned Kryptonian — albeit not the one he’s looking for.”
The official runtime is 2 hours and 24 minutes long. However, Muschietti has revealed that his assembly cut was four hours long. When asked whether the world would ever see the four-hour version the way fans ultimately saw the four-hour cut of Justice League, he said, “Maybe. I’m definitely more happy with this version than the four-hour version. You get excited, and you start improvising with actors, and suddenly you have a scene that has doubled the duration of the script.”
He details how the film spanned from five to three hours during various stages of postproduction. “Then you have to face the edit and say, ‘Okay, we need to remove one hour and a half of this movie. How’s it going to happen?’ At the end of six months, it’s fun. At the beginning, it’s just chaos, and whatever you start doing is wrong, seen in hindsight, because it’s trial and error. You try a lot of things.”
Did The Flash bomb at the opening weekend box office?
The Flash earned $55 million in its domestic opening weekend, which is lower than projections. The film cost $200 million to make. For comparison, the DCEU movie Black Adam earned $67 million in its opening weekend, and ultimately bombed at the box office.
