Ezra Miller’s The Flash Fallout: The Real Reason Hollywood Hit Pause on Attack on Titan
The Flash didn’t just break the DC timeline — its controversy and box-office faceplant reportedly blew up Hollywood’s live-action Attack on Titan, shelving the project before Titans could breach the walls.
Remember when Warner Bros. snapped up Attack on Titan for a live-action movie and it felt like a layup? That was 2018. Then The Flash happened, ate the calendar, and the Titan plan basically drifted into the fog. The good news: a completely different group just stepped in, and they actually have the power to make it happen.
How WB lost the thread
Back in 2018, Warner Bros. landed the live-action rights to Attack on Titan and set Andy Muschietti (the It movies) to direct. On paper, it made perfect sense. Then Muschietti got pulled into The Flash, which turned into a years-long fixer-upper with constant rewrites and reshoots. AOT moved to the back burner and never made it back to the front.
Context didn't help. After the backlash to 2017's Ghost in the Shell, Hollywood got skittish about big anime adaptations. Taika Waititi's Akira slowed to a crawl. A bunch of other anime projects quietly faded. By the time The Flash finally came out and underperformed, the WB version of Attack on Titan wasn't dead on paper, but it was absolutely not moving.
- 2018: WB acquires Attack on Titan live-action rights; Andy Muschietti attached to direct.
- 2019–2023: Muschietti pivots to The Flash; AOT stalls amid rewrites/reshoots on the DC side.
- Post-2017: Ghost in the Shell backlash cools studio appetite for anime remakes; Akira stalls; others disappear.
- 2023: The Flash releases and flops; WB's AOT remains in the maybe-later pile.
The revival: Kodansha steps in
Enter Kodansha Studios, a new live-action arm from the actual publisher behind Attack on Titan (and Akira, and Ghost in the Shell, and more). Eternals director Chloe Zhao is in as Chief Creative Officer, with producer Nicolas Gonda as COO. According to Deadline, this is the first time Kodansha has set up its own outfit to directly steer Hollywood adaptations instead of handing everything off and hoping for the best.
"Guided by our corporate mission, 'Inspire Impossible Stories,' we are constantly seeking new avenues to deliver the rich, diverse narratives originating from Japan to a global audience... This studio is our commitment to accelerating direct partnerships with premier global artists, producers, and partner studios." — Kodansha CEO Yoshinobu Noma
Translation: they want to drive, not ride shotgun. And the timing is smart. Thanks to hits like Netflix's One Piece, the old stigma around anime-to-live-action has flipped. Studios now treat this stuff like untapped IP gold instead of a trap.
What does that mean for Attack on Titan? Nothing is announced today, but with Kodansha building a pipeline and prioritizing its crown jewels, AOT just vaulted from wishful thinking to very plausible. For the first time in years, a Hollywood Titan feels less like a rumor and more like a matter of when.
If you want a refresher while we all wait, the Attack on Titan anime is streaming on Crunchyroll.