Michael Keaton’s Batman Returns in ‘The Flash’ Trailer

For the Fastest Man Alive, The Flash has taken an awful long time getting to theaters.

The Flash’s solo film, starring Ezra Miller as DC’s speedy superhero, was initially announced with a release date of March 23, 2018. But its ultimate director, Andy Muschietti, wasn’t even hired until the summer of 2019; at that point the movie was given a release date of July 1, 2022. Spoiler alert: That didn’t happen. July eventually became November and then November became June of 2023.

Perhaps that was for the best, though, as Miller spent much of 2022 generating headlines due to numerous run-ins with police. (Miller recently pled guilty in a burglary case in Vermont; they announced last August that they had begun treatment for “mental health issues.”) Plus, DC Studios had undergone a complete makeover in the last year, with the company bringing in James Gunn and Peter Safran to work as co-CEOs of the company and to launch a whole new universe of interconnected movies and shows.

That’s left it a little unclear just how The Flash fits in to all of this. Is it the farewell to the old universe, the introduction of the new one, or both? We still don’t really know, but the brand new Super Bowl trailer for the film does show Michael Keaton back as Batman — he even says his iconic line. The trailer also reveals a good deal of the plot; Barry Allen travels through time and alters reality so that General Zod (Michael Shannon, back from Man of Steel) is still alive, and there are no metahumans to stop him. So he has to team up with Keaton’s Batman and a new Supergirl ( to fix things.

Watch the trailer below:

Here is the film’s official synopsis:

Worlds collide in “The Flash” when Barry uses his superpowers to travel back in time in order to change the events of the past. But when his attempt to save his family inadvertently alters the future, Barry becomes trapped in a reality in which General Zod has returned, threatening annihilation, and there are no Super Heroes to turn to. That is, unless Barry can coax a very different Batman out of retirement and rescue an imprisoned Kryptonian… albeit not the one he’s looking for. Ultimately, to save the world that he is in and return to the future that he knows, Barry’s only hope is to race for his life. But will making the ultimate sacrifice be enough to reset the universe?

This is the shorter version of the clip that played during the Super Bowl:

The Flash is scheduled to open in theaters on June 16, 2023.