At a super-secret press event on Monday, the newly minted co-heads of DC Studios, James Gunn and Peter Safran, provided details on the extensive slate of content coming to the rebooted universe, including the Green Lantern series that was first announced back in 2019. Safran and Gunn confirmed that the series, aptly titled Lanterns, will follow fan-favorite members of the Green Lantern Corps: Hal Jordan and John Stewart.
The first Green Lantern series never managed to get off the ground, despite casting Finn Wittrock and Jeremy Irvine as Guy Gardner and Alan Scott, but it looks like this newly retooled series will finally give audiences a Green Lantern series to fall in love with. In addition to confirming that the series will focus on Jordan and Stewart, Safran and Gunn also provided some insight into the type of story the show will have. "It is more of a True Detective-type mystery with our two Lanterns. [A] terrestrial-based mystery,” explained Safran, with Gunn continuing on by saying that this series is what “Leads into the overall story that we're telling throughout the different, different movies and television shows. And we find this Ancient Horror on Earth. And these guys are basically, you know, super cops on precinct Earth.”
When discussing how this show will weave into the films and other series, Safran pointed to how Peacemaker exists now, as a spin-off of The Suicide Squad, with characters that have appeared in other films. This sticks with the previously confirmed statement from the pair that the DCU will be connected across TV, animation, and films. In Safran's words:
"The story is going to weave back and forth between the films and the television shows. Peacemaker is a good example of, of how that works. And that's what we're going to do with this big overarching story that we're telling.”
The History of the Green Lantern Series
As previously mentioned, a live-action Green Lantern show has been in the plans at HBO Max for a while and will be the first live-action project based on the Green Lantern story since the poorly received 2011 film starring Ryan Reynolds. Seth Grahame-Smith was slated to serve as the series showrunner and writer in 2020 before deciding to depart the project following several regime changes at all levels of the company from Warner Bros., HBO Max, and DC Comics even though he had already written a full eight-episode season of TV. It was announced back in October 2022 that the show was under redevelopment not too long after Gunn and Safran gained their new positions at DC Studios.