Flash and Green Lantern get directors …

… and the Justice League cast hasn’t even been announced yet.

David Goyer — who wrote the Blade movies and co-wrote Batman Begins with its director, Christopher Nolan — was set to write and direct a movie based on DC Comics’s Fastest Man Alive, better known to criminals and villains as The Flash.

Goyer was working with real scientists and physicists so that he could incorporate real, mind-bending science stuff into his action-packed story.

But then Goyer was replaced by Shawn Levy, who did the Cheaper by the Dozen movies and Night at the Museum.

Now, MTV Movies Blog reports that Levy has been replaced by David Dobkin, whose directorial credits include Shanghai Knights, Wedding Crashers and the upcoming Christmas comedy Fred Claus.

Dobkin’s previous work is proof that he likes his audience to have fun, so I guess he’s an okay choice for this. He’s certainly a better choice than Levy, though I’d still like to know what cool physics stuff Goyer was going to try to pull off.

Anyway, Dobkin says that his Flash will be the Wally West character, as opposed to DC’s original Flash, Barry Allen.Both Barry and Wally are rumored to be in Justice League, and Dobkin says his Wally movie will be a Justice League spin-off.

So I guess that means the Wally actor in Justice League will also play Dobkin’s Wally. The theme he’s working from is, “You can’t outrun yourself.”

Good luck, Mr. Dobkin.

The Green Lantern situation, on the other hand, gets a little more complicated.

Variety says that Greg Berlanti, whose only other directing credit is a years-old romantic comedy called The Broken Hearts Club: A Romantic Comedy, will helm the film.

Isn’t it a bad sign when you actually have to tell your audience that what they just saw was a romantic comedy?

“That was a very strange drama.”

“Actually, it was a romantic comedy!”

“Oh. Then I liked it even less than I thought I did.”

In all fairness, I’ve never seen the movie.

Maybe it’s great.

As a producer, Berlanti has worked on TV shows like Dawson’s Creek, Everwood, Brothers & Sisters and Dirty Sexy Money.

But this qualifies him to DIRECT a big-budget, effects-heavy Green Lantern movie HOW?

Berlanti will write the script with two of his friends, Michael Green and Marc Guggenheim.

Green is currently struggling to make it through a weak, inconsistent version of The Joker’s origin in DC’s Batman Confidential comic. He wrote several episodes of Smallville and Everwood, and now he’s working as a writer and producer on Heroes.

I know that most of you out there love Heroes, but I just can’t get into it. The stories are boring, the characters are boring and it lacks imagination.

Guggenheim works with Berlanti on Brothers & Sisters. His TV writing credits include episodes of CSI: Miami and Law & Order. He wrote Flash comics for DC for a brief amount of time, and has also written stuff for Marvel.

The Variety article implies that Berlanti’s Green Lantern will be the Hal Jordan character, while it’s commonly believed that raptor — that’s rapper and actor — Common is going to play Jordan’s fellow Green Lantern, John Stewart, in Justice League.

I’m not so sure about that.

First of all, Variety incorrectly identifies Superman/Batman as a Marvel property, when in fact it’s a DC book. So is Variety also incorrect about the Hal Jordan thing?

My guess is that Variety’s reporter typed “Green Lantern” into Google and wrote down the first character description he found. It makes more sense to me, at least, that if Flash is a Justice League spin-off then Green Lantern probably is, too.

In other words, if John Stewart is in Justice League, then John Stewart will also probably be in Berlanti’s Green Lantern.

But here’s where the problems start rolling in.

Christian Bale isn’t going to be Batman in Justice League, but so far there’s no indication that Justice League will interfere with the third Nolan/Bale Batman that’s being set up in next summer’s Batman Begins sequel, The Dark Knight.

Futhermore, Brandon Routh from Superman Returns will not be the Justice League Superman.

Isn’t this all going to be confusing?

Justice League introduces a new Batman and a new Superman.

Green Lantern and Flash get their own movies, presumably using the Justice League actors.

But what about future Batman and Superman movies?

Does the Justice League Batman actor not get his solo movies because there’s already a perfect solo Batman in Christian Bale?

Superman’s situation is even trickier, especially since it’s looking less and less likely that there’s going to be a sequel to the depressing, depressingly awful Superman Returns.

So will the next Superman movie star the Justice League Superman?

Warner Bros. is really creating a nasty, ugly mess for itself.

And if all these other movies somehow derail what Nolan and Bale are doing with Batman, WB will have a war on its hands.

Stay tuned.