{"id":10543,"date":"2022-10-26T12:13:14","date_gmt":"2022-10-26T16:13:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thegreenlanterncorps.com\/web\/?p=10543"},"modified":"2022-10-26T12:17:02","modified_gmt":"2022-10-26T16:17:02","slug":"green-lantern-hbo-max-series-being-redeveloped","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thegreenlanterncorps.com\/web\/green-lantern-hbo-max-series-being-redeveloped\/","title":{"rendered":"Green Lantern HBO Max series being “redeveloped”"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

And will now focus solely around John Stewart. All scripts have been thrown out and presumably all of the previously cast actors have been released.

The Hollywood Reporter:<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

HBO Max<\/a>\u2019s long-gestating\u00a0Green Lantern<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>TV series is changing gears.<\/p>\r\n

The drama that has been\u00a0in the works since late 2019<\/a>\u00a0will now focus on John Stewart, one of DC\u2019s first Black superheroes. The series, from exec producer\u00a0Greg Berlanti<\/a>, was to originally have revolved around Guy Gardner and Alan Scott and had already cast\u00a0Finn Wittrock<\/a>\u00a0(Ratched<\/em>) and\u00a0Jeremy Irvine<\/a>\u00a0(Treadstone<\/em>) as the respective Green Lanterns.<\/p>\r\n

As part of the creative overhaul, writer and showrunner\u00a0Seth Grahame-Smith<\/a>\u00a0has departed the series after completing scripts for a full season of eight episodes. Sources say Grahame-Smith, who\u00a0signed on<\/a>\u00a0as writer and showrunner a year after\u00a0Green Lantern\u00a0<\/em>was announced, chose to leave the project after weathering a number of regime changes at HBO Max, its parent company, producers Warner Bros. Television and now\u00a0DC Comics<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n

The decision to refocus\u00a0Green Lantern\u00a0<\/em>arrives at a pivotal time for DC. Sources say the character of John Stewart was off the table to producers who envisioned the show as focusing on the first Green Lantern, the openly gay Alan Scott, and Guy Gardner as well as a \u201cmultitude of other Lanterns \u2014\u00a0from comic book favorites to never-before-seen heroes.\u201d With DC Comics topper Walter Hamada\u2019s recent exit, a decision was made to start over and build the show around John Stewart, the character who first appeared in the early 1970s and was modeled after Sidney Poitier. It\u2019s worth noting that the\u00a0Green Lantern\u00a0<\/em>creative overhaul has nothing to do with news this week that\u00a0James Gunn and Peter Safran<\/a>\u00a0have been tapped to lead film, TV and animation at DC Studios in a role similar to what Kevin Feige is doing at Marvel. (Gunn and Safran don\u2019t start their new jobs until Nov. 1.)<\/p>\r\n

Of the previous incarnation, only Berlanti and his Warner Bros. TV-based Berlanti Productions remain attached to\u00a0Green Lantern.\u00a0<\/em>(Fellow exec producer Marc Guggenheim, who originally was poised to co-write the pilot alongside Grahame-Smith, was not recently involved with the show ahead of its retooling.)<\/p>\r\n

When HBO Max announced plans for\u00a0Green Lantern\u00a0<\/em>in October 2019, Berlanti described it as the \u201cbiggest DC show ever made,\u201d with plans for the series to go to space. Insiders at the time said it was poised to be the most expensive show DC ever made and easily the largest for HBO Max with a budget estimated in the $120 million range. (House of the Dragon,\u00a0<\/em>by comparison, cost less than $200 million.)<\/p>\r\n

The show\u2019s budget going forward is expected to be significantly less as HBO Max, under David Zaslav\u2019s combined Warner Bros. Discovery, is focusing on right-sizing its various assets. As part of the move to find an estimated $3 billion in cost savings, Zaslav and his division leaders have dropped a number of projects including Berlanti\u2019s planned\u00a0Strange Adventures\u00a0<\/em>anthology<\/a>\u00a0for HBO Max, J.J. Abrams\u2019 HBO original series\u00a0Demimonde\u00a0<\/em>and the already completed\u00a0Batgirl\u00a0<\/em>feature film. (For\u00a0Demimonde,\u00a0<\/em>HBO is said to have\u00a0balked<\/a>\u00a0at Abrams\u2019 request for a budget north of $200 million.)<\/p>\r\n

WBD said in an SEC filing this week that it expects to take $2 billion to $2.5 billion in tax\u00a0write-downs related to content<\/a>. The eight previously completed\u00a0Green Lantern\u00a0<\/em>scripts are expected to be included in those tax write-downs as sources maintain it wasn\u2019t Grahame-Smith\u2019s creative that ultimately doomed the first incarnation of the show but rather its price tag.<\/p>\r\n

As for Wittrock and Irvine, neither remains signed on to\u00a0Green Lantern.\u00a0<\/em>Sources indicate that Berlanti Productions is eager to work with both actors when and if the project, which currently has a script-to-series commitment, moves forward. In spring 2021, when Wittrock and Irvine were cast, the show was still being fast-tracked and was to begin shooting that same year. The project is now on a slower, more HBO-like, development track under Bloys and Warner Bros. TV topper Channing Dungey. A new logline for the series has not yet been determined as the project is back to being in early development.<\/p>\r\n

Reps for HBO Max, Warners, Berlanti Productions and Grahame-Smith declined to comment.<\/p>\r\n

The HBO Max take is Berlanti\u2019s second stab at the world of Green Lantern. He previously penned the screenplay (alongside Michael Green, Guggenheim and Michael Goldenberg) for the 2011 DC-produced Ryan Reynolds starrer. That movie was met with negative reviews and was considered a flop. It grossed $219 million vs. a budget of $200 million.<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And will now focus solely around John Stewart. All scripts have been thrown out and presumably all of the previously cast actors have been released. The Hollywood Reporter: HBO Max\u2019s long-gestating\u00a0Green Lantern\u00a0TV series is changing gears. The drama that has … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[175],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thegreenlanterncorps.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thegreenlanterncorps.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thegreenlanterncorps.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thegreenlanterncorps.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thegreenlanterncorps.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/thegreenlanterncorps.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10543\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thegreenlanterncorps.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thegreenlanterncorps.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thegreenlanterncorps.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}