News about the Green Lantern film is being released at a faster pace now that pre-production is ramping up.
Production Weekly reported yesterday that Green Lantern is scheduled to begin filming in mid-September in Australia for a targeted December 10th, 2010 release. The script for the film, which will focus on Hal Jordan as the ring-wielding hero, was written by Greg Berlanti, Marc Guggenheim, and Michael Green.
“We’re moving forward at a pretty good clip,” Guggenheim told Newsarama Thursday, confirming the September date. “We have a director — Martin Campbell — and we’re moving ahead with pre-production, which Martin is overseeing.”
Also this week, Latino Review cited an unnamed source as saying the lead role of Hal Jordan was already offered to Chris Pine, who plays Captain Kirk in this summer’s Star Trek film. The rumor was later refuted by other websites with their own “sources,” and other casting rumors have put actors Ryan Gosling and Casey Affleck up for the role.
Although Guggenheim couldn’t comment on casting rumors, he said the script is currently undergoing revisions as filmmakers prepare for production this fall.
“Greg, Michael, and myself are hard at work on further refinements to the script. It’s very exciting and we’re having a blast,” he said.
Guggenheim, who created the recently canceled television show Eli Stone with Berlanti, is also the current writer on Amazing Spider-Man for Marvel Comics, while Green co-writes Superman/Batman for DC. Guggenheim told Newsarama last year that because the writers are involved with comics, the script is “not only a respectful approach to the character, but it’s a loving approach to the entire mythos.”
“It’s a fan’s take. We are all huge fans of the character,” Green told Newsarama when promoting his new television show Kings. “Hal Jordan is interesting because there have been a lot of incarnations, but he does have this indomitable will. One of the other fun things about Green Lantern is this idea that you are joining something bigger and larger than itself.”
In comics, Hal Jordan is a pilot who is given a powerful ring and its lantern-shaped battery after discovering a spaceship crashed on Earth. He replaces the ship’s alien pilot as a member of an interstellar corps of heroes who enforce justice with their green energy-emitting rings.
The fact that screenwriters are talking about the “entire mythos” and “joining something bigger and larger than itself” has fans hoping that some of their favorite Green Lantern Corps members besides Hal Jordan will show up, especially since Guggenheim confirmed the corps’ home planet of Oa is being designed for the movie.
Green Lantern may also mark the beginning of a series of shared universe films that link various DC Comics characters to one another, similar to how Marvel’s Iron Man and Incredible Hulk movies set up the concept of an Avengers now film slated for 2012. The idea has been supported by Guggenheim, who recently speculated on the possibility of a Superman cameo in the Green Lantern film.
And earlier this month, Green Lantern producer Donald De Line, while promoting I Love You, Man to Collider.com, said of the shared universe concept: “DC Comic is a part of Warner Bros. and they both have a very large agenda with that. So I think they’ve got all kinds of things in the works. Yeah, definitely.”