‘The Flash’ Writers Reveal the Scrapped Version Where Bruce Wayne Never Became Batman
‘The Flash’ has been picked apart from every angle since its 2023 release, from its divisive multiverse mechanics to the behind-the-scenes turmoil that shadowed its production. What’s remained largely a mystery, though, is just how differently the film could have turned out under the writers originally attached to bring Barry Allen’s solo story to life.
That mystery is finally getting some answers. John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, the filmmaking duo behind ‘Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves’ and the upcoming ‘Mayday,’ were among the earlier writers who took a crack at ‘The Flash’ before Christina Hodson eventually reworked their script into the version that reached theaters, with Daley and Goldstein retaining a story credit alongside Joby Harold.
Speaking with The Playlist, Daley and Goldstein finally revealed exactly what their original take looked like, and it bears little resemblance to Andy Muschietti’s finished film. The film was initially set to feature a Bruce Wayne who never became Batman, instead written as a billionaire party boy who was forced into becoming a hero.
Daley explained that only one core element carried through from their version into the final film, an aspect of Barry Allen and his slightly younger self embarking on a journey together. Everything else, he said, ended up being fundamentally different from what Muschietti and Hodson ultimately delivered.
The Bruce Wayne concept stood out as the most significant departure from the released film. Rather than pulling from an already-established, retired version of Batman the way the final movie did with Michael Keaton’s return, Daley and Goldstein envisioned a Bruce Wayne who had never taken up the mantle at all, an aimless billionaire with no clear direction in life. Daley described the appeal of that idea as thrusting an unlikely character into a hero position rather than relying on a hero who already knew exactly what he was doing.
That approach would have marked a fundamentally different entry point into Batman’s mythology for the DC Extended Universe, sidestepping the nostalgia-driven Keaton cameo that ultimately became one of the finished film’s most talked-about elements. Instead of a legacy hero reluctantly stepping back into the cowl, audiences would have watched someone essentially become Batman for the first time within the story itself.
The film went through a long and complicated development process before reaching theaters, with Daley and Goldstein eventually exiting the project and Hodson taking over to reshape the screenplay into what became the released version starring Ezra Miller as Barry Allen. That final film ultimately leaned on Keaton’s returning Batman and Ben Affleck’s version of the character as key emotional touchstones, a very different structural choice from the untested Bruce Wayne origin Daley and Goldstein had originally envisioned.
Given how much ‘The Flash’ leaned on legacy casting and nostalgia as major selling points during its marketing and release, it’s easy to see why a version built around an entirely unestablished Bruce Wayne might have felt like a harder sell to a studio banking on recognizable faces. Still, the concept offers a genuinely intriguing glimpse at a road not taken for one of DC’s most familiar characters.
With ‘The Flash’ now existing as a relic of the pre-James Gunn DC Extended Universe, this kind of retrospective look at its earlier drafts offers fans a rare window into how differently the film could have handled its Batman connection.
What do you think of the scrapped idea where Bruce Wayne had never become Batman?
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