‘Green Lantern’ TV Series Being Redeveloped

Seth Grahame-Smith Leaves New ‘Green Lantern’ Series Amid Retooling Plans

HBO Max has decided to go in another direction with the show, which had already cast Finn Wittrock and Jeremy Irvine.

Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps from DC Comics. Photo courtesy of DC.Fandom.com.

It’s (almost) all change for the DC Comics-based ‘Green Lantern’ show that had been moving forward at HBO Max. Though it had gotten to the point of casting Jeremy Irvine and Finn Wittrock in the lead roles, the series is headed back to the drawing board with a new take.

Back in 2020, ‘Pride and Prejudice and Zombies’ Seth Grahame-Smith hopped aboard to write and run what HBO Max was picturing its most expensive series to date, a space-set ‘Green Lantern’ drama whose focus would be the Alan Scott and Guy Gardner iterations of the character among the first and most popular versions.

It also represented movement on representation, with Scott, whose comic book character is openly gay these days bringing that across to the show.

The concept of the ‘Green Lantern’ comics is that of a super-powered, police force, battling evil doers with rings that allow them to channel energy into different forms. There are many Lanterns, who patrol the known and unknown universe.

Greg Berlanti, who has had a hand in pretty much every DC TV series (and a whole host of others) – and who was one of the writers on the 2011 Ryan Reynolds-starring movie – was producing the show via his Berlanti Productions.

While Berlanti is staying aboard, the changes mean that Grahame-Smith is departing the show, despite having written eight scripts already and overseen the casting process for Wittrock and Irvine.

Jeremy Irvine in Steven Spielberg's 'War Horse.'

No new creative team has been appointed for the series, but the budget will apparently be less and the focus will instead be on John Stewart, the first Black iteration of the Lantern character. His version was introduced in the 1970s and used Sidney Poitier as its inspiration.

The history of the Lantern on screen has been seriously mixed. Though different takes on the character have flourished in animated movies and series, their live-action counterparts have had less luck. The Reynolds movie didn’t triumph at the box office, and there have been fleeting glimpses on the small screen.

Even Zack Snyder didn’t manage to realize his chosen Lantern – John Stewart – in his mammoth Snyder Cut of ‘Justice League’. Despite shooting a cameo with Wayne T. Carr as Stewart, Warners asked him to remove the character because of the studio’s own plans. In the end, Snyder swapped in Martian Manhunter.

Warner Bros. Discovery has been on a cost-cutting binge of late, cancelling movies and in-the-works TV series all over the place, including ‘Batgirl’ and ‘Wonder Twins’. Since the merger with Discovery, new company chief David Zaslav has announced it is taking billions in tax write-downs as it reduces budgets and reverses decisions.

‘Green Lantern’ will now be a much smaller and cheaper series, which and though it was supposed to shoot last year, is now back in development and much further from any eventual release date.