portray Barry's father Henry Allen. Clemons and Crudup both filmed cameo appearances for Justice League after being cast in The Flash. Pre-production began by October ahead of a filming start in March 2017, scheduled before another commitment that Miller had in July. At the end of October, Famuyiwa left the project after not being able to "come together creatively" with the studio, who disagreed with the more mature direction that Famuyiwa wanted to take the film. The film was put on hold while the studio searched for a new director and Miller prepared to film Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018). During that time, Warner Bros. decided to take the film in a new direction and in January 2017, Joby Harold was hired to do a page-one rewrite of the script. He handed in a draft by May, when the studio's top choices to direct were Robert Zemeckis and Matthew Vaughn. Both had expressed interest in the project, but had potential scheduling issues that could prevent them from taking it on. Raimi, Marc Webb, and Jordan Peele had already turned down offers to direct the film, as did Ben Affleck who portrayed Bruce Wayne / Batman in previous DCEU films. At the July 2017 San Diego Comic-Con, the film was announced with the new title Flashpoint, based on the comic book of the same title in which Allen travels back in time to save his mother's life and accidentally creates an alternate timeline. Dan Mazeau contributed to the script during this time. Johns confirmed in November that the Flashpoint concept would allow the film to tell a unique story about Batman, with the comic book storyline exploring a timeline where Thomas Wayne is Batman; Jeffrey Dean Morgan expressed interest in reprising his role as Thomas Wayne from Batman v Superman. In January 2018, the filmmaking duo John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein entered negotiations to write and direct the film after the studio chose not to wait for Zemeckis's schedule to be free. Daley and Goldstein were confirmed as directors in March, and the film's title reverted to The Flash the next month. Filming was expected to begin in Atlanta in February 2019, but Miller's commitments to Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022) delayed filming again. The Flash was aiming for a 2021 release at that point. In mid-March 2019, Miller was revealed to be writing a new