Or Is His Name Just On A Big Wishlist?
How fast do rumors travel these days for ravenous bloggers making mountains out of molehills? Lightning quick. What is tossed off as an aside in a ScreenRant gets picked up the world round and is already building the kind of traction that makes planets spin backwards in lieu of a good, plausible story line.
So yeah, Screenrant briefly mention that “the grapevine hints” that Chris Pine could play the D.C. Comics super speedster The Flash now that Bradley Cooper says he’s not playing the part and others follow suit.
But these are early days. The “Flash” script — penned by “Green Lantern” scribes Marc Guggenheim, Michael Green and Greg Berlanti — won’t be turned in until December and while casting ideas are probably floating around, studio heads are likely just running down the go-to checklist which includes Cooper, Pine, Justin Timberlake, Ryan Gosling, etc. Earlier this year that list also had Sam Worthington, but his asking price has evidently gone up and his name isn’t as prevalent on these wishlists. Expect Pine to say, when he’s inevitably asked, just like Cooper, that he knows nothing about this. Why? Because he probably doesn’t yet (and neither did Cooper). Both their agents and managers probably haven’t been approached because “The Flash” isn’t quite there yet.
But the rumor mill is hungry, so they’ll take what they can get.
Meanwhile, Guggenheim has been telling reporters that “The Flash” will have several elements to it, including a serial-killer vibe and athletics on top of good old, super-heroism. “We’re being true to the whole Barry Allen science police [story],” he told Newsarama. “We’re being true to those origins and updating them for the 21st century. I feel like in many ways the movie is three movies in one. It’s part thriller, that forensic, cool, ‘Seven,’ ‘Silence of the Lambs’; Part superhero movie and part sports movie because there’s an athleticism to this character that other superheroes don’t have… And you get to see how all three of those elements inform each other and make the whole movie even better. It’s sort of like the way in Green Lantern we took a superhero movie and combined it with a space opera, here we’re combining the superhero movie with these other two genres and it’s just a blast.”
Hmm, three films in one? Hope that’s not too convoluted. Either way, “The Flash” has been in development for years and Ryan Reynolds — another go-to list guy as well as Tom Hardy now — was pegged to be the lead, but the screenplay was so botched D.C. and Warner Bros. basically started over with this new iteration from the “Green Lantern” writing trio.