Our Green Lantern HBO Max Scoop Confirmed
In a confirmation of our previous reporting, the HBO DC series Green Lantern is dead in its current form, and will be totally redeveloped as a new series focused on a different Green Lantern.
The upheaval at Warner Bros. and HBO continues, as the planned Green Lantern series for HBO Max has been scrapped and is being rebuilt from the ground up. Back in August, Giant Freakin Robot exclusively reported that the show in its current form was dead, thanks to information provided by our trusted inside source, and today’s report only confirms the details we provided then. According to a new report by The Hollywood Reporter, showrunner Seth Grahame-Smith, who had written scripts for all eight of the show’s first season, has left the project amidst the changes at Warner Bros., which includes last year’s merger with Discovery to create a new media conglomerate focused on cutting costs and canceling projects.
The DC Extended Universe (DCEU) series was first announced in 2019, and had previously cast Finn Wittrock (American Horror Story) as Guy Gardner and Jeremy Irvine (War Horse) as Alan Scott, with a focus on the wider Green Lantern Corps. The revamped series will ditch those characters and instead focus on the first black Green Lantern, John Stewart, first introduced in the comic books in the 1970s and made popular in multiple DC animated shows. Executive producer Greg Berlanti, who created and produced the WB’s DC Universe shows and even wrote the failed 2011 Green Lantern film starring Ryan Reynolds, remains on board the series.
The inclusion of Alan Scott in the original premise would have been groundbreaking for the DCEU, as he was one of the first major DC comic characters to come out as gay. With a new focus on John Stewart, however, the Justice League will continue to see some diversity in its characters.
It’s not clear if the new HBO Green Lantern series will tie in to the members of the Green Lantern Corps, Yalan Gur and Kilowog, who each had brief appearances in Zack Snyder’s Justice League. With the return of Henry Cavill as Superman in Black Adam and multiple future DC films, it appears Warner Bros. Discovery is set on keeping the Snyderverse and its characters as part of the DCEU going forward.
The complete reset of the HBO Green Lantern series was not related to the departure of DC Film President Walter Hamada, nor was it connected to the recent announcement that Suicide Squad director James Gunn and Peter Safran will now lead all creative projects at DC Studios as of next month.
There is speculation that one of the reasons for Grahame-Smith’s departure may have been Warner Bros. Discovery cost-cutting among its HBO productions, as The Hollywood Reporter is expected to include the show’s costs as a tax write-off. Green Lantern was expected to be one of the most expensive series HBO has ever produced, and cost cutting may have been behind the decision to shift the plot away from the Lantern Corps and focus on a single Lantern in John Stewart. Fans can at least take solace that the project was not canceled entirely, as WBD has done with other high profile HBO projects, most notably Batgirl.
