How The Flash Scored Its Biggest Cameo (And Kept It Secret)

This post contains spoilers for "The Flash."

Few superhero films in memory have traveled quite as rocky a road towards release as "The Flash." Plagued by studio shake-ups, rewrites and director changes, and the very high-profile arrests of its lead actor, "The Flash" has been in the works for so long that keeping any part of it a secret seemed impossible. Except, somehow, it did. The return of both Ben Affleck's and Michael Keaton's iterations of Batman was confirmed ahead of the film's release, but fans who caught the movie in theaters this weekend were subject to a totally surprising third Batman cameo: George freaking Clooney!

A new report by The Hollywood Reporter shares the story of Clooney's totally unexpected cameo — which, it turns out, never leaked or was rumored because it was added to the film very late in the game. Like, the scene was shot in January 2023 level late in the game. According to THR, the new ending came after two previous ideas were conceived of and scrapped. In the first, Keaton's Batman and Sasha Calle's Supergirl were meant to appear, indicating that Barry (Ezra Miller) hadn't actually set the world right after all. Later, Henry Cavill's Superman and Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman were added in, but with the restructure of Warner Bros. under David Zaslav and a new plan for DC universe on the horizon, both those actors' future projects were more or less axed.

Thus, the Clooney cameo idea was born. According to THR, DC Studios Co-CEOS James Gunn and Peter Safran dug the idea of bringing the actor back, and Clooney's agent ended up being shown a cut of the film that ultimately convinced Clooney to get on board. Miller and Clooney shot the scene together in just one morning in January, with the outlet noting that Clooney apparently also gave the troubled actor some advice "about handling being in the public eye and behaving in public." Amazingly, Warner Bros. was able to keep the reveal from the public until June press screenings, leaving the scene out of an early CinemaCon screening and all test screenings.

Any superhero movie can throw in a cameo as a last-second stinger before the roll to credits, but the "ER" and "Ocean's Eleven" actor's return is especially surprising given how deeply he seems to dislike his turn as the caped crusader in 1997's "Batman & Robin." Clooney has gone on record about hating the much-maligned film, at one point telling Graham Norton, "I always apologize for 'Batman & Robin.' I actually thought I destroyed the franchise until somebody else brought it back years later." Luckily, the Batman franchise seems perfectly capable of destroying itself without Clooney.

"The Flash" is now in theaters.