Agents of SHIELD's Chloe Bennet recently expressed her frustration with the lack of synergy between Marvel's movie and television projects but now it's a DC star's turn. Arrow's Willa Holland is annoyed their version of Suicide Squad got scrapped for the upcoming Warner Bros. film as well as a loss of work for her Arrow and Flash co-stars.
Holland plays Thea Queen, aka Speedy, on The CW show and speaking at MCM London Comic Con, The Mirror reports her getting quite frank about the situation. “Marvel does it in their own weird way – the mash between Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D and the movies and stuff,” she said. “So it's a little upsetting because you know it is possible and it can be done and how good it would be if it was done because you're basically you're giving the world two different Flashes all of a sudden.”
While there's going to be plenty of TV crossover opportunities now that Supergirl is moving to The CW, on the big screen it's another matter. Ezra Miller was chosen as the movie version of The Flash for Warner Bros., but Holland feels the small screen Barry Allen, Grant Gustin, and her Arrow co-star Stephen Amell would take film roles in a second.
The Mirror goes on to report a lot of The CW's plans were scrapped thanks to the upcoming Suicide Squad film starring Will Smith, Viola Davis, Margot Robbie, and Jared Leto:
She also aired her annoyance at the upcoming Suicide Squad film muscling in on Arrow's plans. Harley Quinn appeared back in season two of Arrow, before it was announced Margot Robbie would be playing the villain on the big screen. Holland admitted the show had plans for the much loved villain but DC had clamped down. She added: “We get it, we're not going to fight about it anymore.”
She added the show had already created it's own Arkham Aslyum, but it all came to an abrupt end. “When DC found out they were going to be doing their own movie we had to axe all of the characters before we even got to show them. It was annoying at first and then when Stephen found out there was going to be a Justice League movie it only seemed, rightly so, he would be playing Green Arrow on it as well as Grant playing the Flash. It just seemed like the right normal answer. Once they said no, you can't really fight against them for it, because they are the people that gave us a job in the first place. You just have to sit there on your hands, like okay, I get it!”
I don't blame her. It does seem kind of unfair for the films to add another version of TV characters but the TV characters need to be killed off entirely for them to work on a film. You may recall Arrow's Amell had similarly strong words after Miller was hired:
I thought that the way that Warner Bros. announced the slate of DC movies could have been handled better. And I think someone like Grant Gustin, who has just launched an iconic character like the Flash to record-breaking numbers, numbers that far-surpassed Arrow”s numbers, he should have been given a wider berth than two episodes before another actor was announced to play his character. All that being said, that”s because I”m protective of Grant, and that”s because I think producing 23 episodes of superhero television is more difficult than producing a feature film. And it”s 23 episodes again, and again, and again.
But actors don't make casting decisions. “I just don”t think it was a good fit,” Justice League director Zack Snyder told the NY Daily News earlier this year about not casting Gustin. “I”m very strict with this universe, and I just don”t see a version where…that (tone is) not our world.” He's got that right.
The Flash movie is set for a 2018 release, but we haven't heard much about it except Miller's casting. Miller had a very small cameo as The Flash in Batman v Superman but will debut in full in Justice League in November of 2017.