Green Lantern has been one of those problematic comic book characters who seems ideally suited to film and television adaptations, given the nature of the character’s traits and powers being wielded by a number of different superheroes including Alan Scott, the first Green Lantern back in 1940, through Hal Jordan, John Stewart, Simon Baz and Jessica Cruz to name a few. However, other than a badly received Ryan Reynolds movie in 2011, one that Marvel’s Deadpool 2 made sure to poke fun at in its closing scenes, and a few references scattered through some DC series’, it has taken a decade to bring the Green Lantern into a live-action vehicle, and that would be HBO Max’s upcoming Green Lantern TV series.
Fans had expected to get an update on the new series at DC FanDome last weekend, but were left sadly disappointed. However, showrunner Seth Grahame-Smith recently spoke to Collider about the “big undertaking” of the series and pretty much answered the question of why DC FanDome ignored the show.
“Yeah, that show is gigantic,” Seth Grahame-Smith said. “It has taken quite a bit of time to get to this point and it’s just a big, big undertaking. It’s going really well. All I can say is that it’s going really well and there are gonna be Green Lanterns in it, and it’s gonna be on HBO Max.”
“I’ll admit, I wasn’t like a huge comic book kid,” Grahame-Smith added. “I was a huge movie kid. And so, my introduction to DC Comics came through the ’89 Batman movie. When that movie came out, I was like, “Oh, my God, Batman is the coolest,” and I started reading Batman comic books. But Green Lantern is something that, to be honest with you, just came to me later, by way of just talking about doing the show. The possibility of doing the show led me down a deep dive of Green Lantern lore. We’ll see. It’s gonna be a while before the world gets to see that, but we are very, very busy at work, as we speak.”
Green Lantern Corps will bring to screens a huge time spanning storyline, which is probably one of the reasons why it is going to take a little bit of time to get just right, as we know how complex any series or movie featuring numerous timeline points can get, and it stars Finn Wittrock (American Horror Story) as Guy Gardner, Jeremy Irvine (Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again) as Alan Scott, Tobias Menzies (Game of Thrones) rumored to be playing Sinestro. The series is also expected to see on-screen versions of Jessica Cruz, Simon Baz, Killowog, and a newly-created character named Bree Jarta brought to life.
While the history of the Green Lantern on screen has not been as rosy as many of DC’s other heroes, there is certainly a lot going for the new series, as with DC now seeming to have a better grip on what works and what doesn’t, and Warner Bros. eager to make HBO Max the DC version of Disney+’s Marvel catalogue when it comes to exclusive content, this can surely only mean good things for fans of the source material. This news originated at Collider.
Source: movieweb.com