Waiting for a Flash movie at this point feels, ironically enough, like running a marathon. The Scarlet Speedster's solo film has had a troubled development, one filled with multiple director switches and script rewrites over the span of just a few short years. Though a pair of directors are currently in the process of being locked down (John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein), and production is expected to start on the film once the ink dries, it's almost impossible to believe it's actually going to happen.

Though we know that the plan is for the film to take place after the events of last year's Justice League, story details have been scarce. However, rumors have swirled about which additional characters will show up as the supporting cast to Ezra Miller’s headlining superhero. Most recently, a report surfaced pegging Killer Frost, Heatwave, and Captain Cold as players in the film, with Frost in particular said to be taking on something of a lead role. Eobard Thawne, the Reverse Flash, is also said to possibly be in the film as well, though not as the film’s primary antagonist.

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Since the film is being subtitled Flashpoint, it's quite possible that Frost, Heatwave, and Cold will not be the characters that they usually are in the source material. If the film is at all faithful to the 2011 Flashpoint comic, the three of them will likely be heroes, or at least anti-heroes. But the inclusion of all three of them, who currently exist in The CW's popular Arrowverse as well, speaks to a problem that currently hovers over the DC Extended Universe, and it's one that should be dialed back on.

Specifically, the DCEU continually encroaches on the Arrowverse's territory, and not just with those three Flash characters. Deadshot, Katana, Captain Boomerang and Amanda Waller, who all existed in the Arrowverse at one point, had to be killed or written off and had an entire storyline about the show’s Suicide Squad axed to make way for the characters appearing in 2016's Suicide Squad film. (The show even had their own Harley Quinn briefly appear, albeit off-camera, and now she’s disappeared off the face of the Earth.)  Deathstroke, a recurring and vital character to the mythology of Arrow specifically, had to be written off the show so he can be in future films and his upcoming solo flick. To Warner Bros., it probably feels like a natural thing to do, because unlike Marvel, the studio actually owns the film rights to all its characters. But instead of being natural, it just comes across as stealing at best, and momentum killing at worst.

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If there's one thing that the Arrowverse generally succeeds at, it's at its characters. There have certainly been some missteps, but by and large, this TV enterprise has succeeded because fans love these characters and what's happened to them in and across their various shows. Of them all, Captain Cold and Heatwave rank among the best of the bunch. Not just because they're played by Wentworth Miller and Dominic Purcell, who played brothers on Prison Break for years, but also because the characters were allowed to grow beyond being enemies for the Scarlet Speedster. Captain Cold always had something of a code that set him apart from other villains in the comics, yes, but the Arrowverse made him and Heatwave into full-fledged heroes through various seasons of The Flash and DC's Legends of Tomorrow.

Cold's popularity comes with an even greater impact; following the character's death on Legends, Miller was offered a deal that allowed him to portray the character across different shows. Admittedly, the Arrowverse series' only used the character sparingly for that purpose, but when he returned in a big way with last year's Crisis on Earth-X, it felt like he never even left. He stuck around for a few episodes of Legends as an alt-universe version named Citizen Cold, but there's only one more episode left before Miller hangs up that parka for good.

Legends of Tomorrow Ray Palmer Atom and Captain Cold Leonard Snart

By no means is Miller the first actor to leave the Arrowverse behind, but he's most certainly the biggest one to do so, and to leave with a (hopefully) happy ending in sight, since he's going to be marrying his boyfriend in his home universe. Just as it will be strange to imagine another person playing Han Solo in three months when the character's original actor is still living, the same holds true for characters such as Cold, Heatwave and Frost. Their respective actors have played them for so long that it's hard to not imagine them as playing those people for as long as possible, and in some ways, it may just be considered by many to be "too soon" to recast them, even in a different continuity.

RELATED: Legends of Tomorrow Teases the Arrowverse’s Next Heroic Wedding

DC and Warner Bros.'s history of dictating what characters are off limits for the TV shows and when is one fans have discussed for years. Thus, if Flashpoint really does feature Frost, Heatwave, and Cold, fans are already bracing to learn Heatwave and Frost will be shelved on their respective shows to make way for the cinematic interpretations. That isn't really a good deal, especially when, so far, the DCEU's track record with "importing" characters from the shows for their films hasn't gone well.

Thus far, the DCEU's only real success seems to be Deadshot, and that largely depends on how one feels about Suicide Squad and Will Smith's portrayal. The DCEU's future is constantly in flux, and combined with the arguably wonky logic of who can be used and how/when, there may honestly be no point in trying to invest in the actors playing the silver screen versions of these characters. Warner Bros. may randomly just decide to start from square one yet again one day, making the shows a safer bet for longtime fans to be emotionally interested in.

Warner Bros. is obviously free to use whoever it wants for the DCEU movies, that’s true, but bringing over characters from the shows is doing them more harm than good. The bottom line it, the movies need to step out of the show’s shadow in order to stand alongside them, but that can’t be done until the DCEU figures out what it truly wants to be -- and stops poaching the Arrowverse's bad guys.