Over the course of the last several months, Warner Bros. has undergone a number of major changes, including the removal of over 30 animated titles in preparation for the merger of HBO Max and Discovery+, the consolidation of Cartoon Network and Warner Animation into a single studio, the shifting of numerous DCEU release dates, and the announcement that James Gunn and Peter Safran will serve as co-CEOs of DC Studios. A big portion of the show’s personnel has left the project, and a recent report reveals that the long-in-development Green Lantern series will be reworked. The Hollywood Reporter has reported the news that the show’s main characters and creator/showrunner would be switching roles.
In 2020, a full year after the show’s first announcement 2019, Seth Grahame-Smith was recruited to serve as the series showrunner and writer. He had previously written an entire eight-episode season of television for the show’s prior edition. Grahame-Smith stayed with the project, according to THR’s sources, through many management changes at Warner Bros., HBO Max, and DC Comics. Early plans for the show included Finn Wittrock and Jeremy Irvine as Guy Gardner and Alan Scott. John Stewart, one of DC’s most prominent Green Lanterns who has starred in several animated shows based on DC characters and was one of DC’s first black superheroes, will reportedly now be the focus of the series, according to sources speaking with THR.
Even though Wittrock and Irvine have left the series, there has been no casting announcement as of yet, and there is still a chance that they may be involved in the show’s future. After the badly reviewed 2011 film starring Ryan Reynolds, written by Berlanti, Michael Green, Marc Guggenheim, and Michael Goldenberg, this series would be Greg Berlanti’s second effort at developing a live-action movie based on the Green Lantern.
Since former President of DC Films Walter Hamada has just left the company, the opportunity has arisen to reboot the series and reorient it around Stewart. THR makes it clear that the recent hire of Gunn and Safran is not responsible for this creative revamp since the two will not begin their new duties at the firm until November 1. Berlanti, through his company Berlanti Productions, will continue to serve as executive producer. Once described by Berlanti as the “largest DC programme ever created” in October 2019, the project’s budget has now been reduced significantly. The show’s budget was rumoured to be about $120 million, making it DC’s most expensive production to date.
The production schedule for the programme was accelerated, and it was intended to begin filming in 2019. Now that it’s part of a script-to-series commitment, the show’s development at HBO will take a more conventional and measured pace. While the show’s scale has been reduced from what was first planned, at least it is still being produced, unlike a number of other endeavours that have been cancelled due to Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav’s efforts to save costs. Both the J.J. Abrams science fiction series Demimonde and the Berlanti-produced anthology series Strange Adventures, which had Kevin Smith attached to also produce, were cancelled. Scoob! : Holiday Haunt, the sequel feature to 2020’s Scoob!, and the high-profile cancellation of the live-action Batgirl picture starring Leslie Grace have both been attributed to the company’s shift in direction.
At this time, we don’t have a release date for Green Lantern on HBO Max.
As the project is now once again in its formative stages, a new logline for the series has not yet been decided.