With HBO Max set to launch in less than 24 hours, the press can’t stop talking about it. Speaking to Business Insider, HBO Max Content Chief Kevin Reilly dropped a little nugget for us Green Lantern fans desperate for information. Hit the jump to see what he had to say.
“Greg [Berlanti, who is producing a Green Lantern series for Max] has done a lot of really quality DC fare for The CW. These will not be that. These will be next step up in production value. You can expect the highest level of cinematic production values on those shows, and that’s the same for the projects we’ve announced with J.J. [Abrams].”
Thats his response to whether Green Lantern and other DC Originals will have movie budgets. Here’s his take on bringing Doom Patrol from the DC Universe streaming service and if we’ll see more shows making the move.
There have been extensive discussions around DCU because DC is such a valuable entity to us and the depth of fandom is so important. So we really want to figure out how we walk this line for fans where we have a deep fan engagement, which is why DCU was designed, and a broader fan engagement.
[A Max representative later told Business Insider that there are “no current plans for any other DCU show” to move to Max.]
That is evolving but there were high-end series that DCU produced that felt like, budgetarily, we could handle from a business model better, and bring along and service that swath of fans. “Doom Patrol” was a show we identified that had deep love for it and tucked right into our portfolio.
On top of that, Vulture got a quote that straddles the line between good and bad for the upcoming lantern show. Speaking about HBO proper and its separate line of thinking and comparing it to what the new HBO Max Originals will be tackling.
“They would never do a Greg Berlanti–type young-adult show or a D.C. [Comics] property that may have a younger skew to it,” he says, alluding to Berlanti’s upcoming Green Lantern series for the platform.
Well shit. To me, the pessimist, that quote screams “Don’t expect Watchmen, expect Legends of Tomorrow. Which is fine, if you like Legends but that’s the last thing you want to hear if the prestige that HBO brings with it is going to stay far from your favorite intellectual property. Fingers crossed that Berlanti uses his bigger budget to go beyond the formulaic monster of the week episodes we have gotten with the Arrowverse shows.
