According to The Hollywood Reporter Shawn (Night at the Museum) Levy has replaced David Goyer as the director of a movie based on DC Comics character The Flash for Warner Bros.  Last week Goyer announced his departure from the project on his My Space blog as follows: 'The God's honest truth is that WB and myself simply couldn't agree on what would make for a cool Flash film. I'm quite proud of the screenplay I turned in. I threw my heart into it, and I genuinely think it would've been the basis of a groundbreaking film. But as of now, the studio is heading off in a completely different direction.'

That different direction apparently entails (according to The Reporter) a switch to the lighter side, and while Levy, who also directed remakes of Cheaper by the Dozen and The Pink Panther, 'has no intention of making The Flash a comedy, he is aiming for a lighter movie than previous Warners comic book adaptations, such as Batman Begins and Superman Returns.'

The departure of Goyer, who was a co-writer on Batman Begins, from The Flash as well as the news that Joss Whedon is off the Wonder Woman film project (see 'Whedon Off Wonder Woman') has undoubtedly created consternation in fandom, but the outcry over these moves could easily be eclipsed, if as some preliminary reports have indicated, director Joel Schumacher, whose main claim to fame is putting nipples on the Batsuit, were to helm a film based on Neil Gaiman's Sandman.  It is beginning to look as if some Hollywood execs (at least at Warners) don't remember that the success of the wave of comic book based movies in this young century, which started with Brian Singer's X-Men in 2000, was in good measure the result of entrusting the projects to writers and directors who actually understand and liked the comic books and characters the films depict.