‘Green Lantern’: HBO Max’s Project Starts Over, Loses Showrunner, Slashes Budget & Shifts Focus To John Stewart

It’s already been a few years, 2019 exactly, since it was announced that Greg Berlanti and Warner Bros. were working together on a big-budget “Green Lantern” TV series for HBO Max. The series has been moving along at a slow pace, but with significant milestones. Seth Grahame-Smith was hired to write and showrun the interstellar series. Finn Wittrock and Jeremy Irvine were brought in to star in the two lead roles. And filming was said to be coming closer and closer to actually happening. Well, it’s 2022 and a lot has changed at Warner Bros. (now, Warner Bros. Discovery). Now, all that work on “Green Lantern” seems to be for naught as the series is going back to the drawing board.

According to THR, Greg Berlanti’s “Green Lantern” series has lost its writer-showrunner, Seth Grahame-Smith, and the series will now go back to development focusing on completely new characters, jettisoning all the work that has been done over the past few years. Specifically, it appears that when Walter Hamada was in charge of DC Films, Berlanti was unable to use the character of John Stewart in the series, and now that Hamada is no longer at WBD/DC Films, the “Green Lantern” show will be rewritten as a John Stewart-focused series.

READ MORE: ‘Green Lantern’: Lee Toland Krieger To Direct Multiple Episodes Of Greg Berlanti’s Superhero Series

That’s a lot of information, to be sure. So, let’s try to take this piece by piece.

As development on “Green Lantern” progressed under the purview of Grahame-Smith, the series was set to star Wittrock and Irvine as Guy Gardner and Alan Scott, respectively. These are well-known Lanterns in the DC Universe, and the show would have been a big ensemble, showcasing the various other Lantern characters around the universe. For those unaware, the Green Lanterns are a group of space cops in the DCU, who use a magical ring to fight bad guys all around the universe. 

As the show came together, Grahame-Smith reportedly finished 8 scripts for the new series and things seemed to be moving along at a solid pace. However, when David Zaslav took over as CEO and WB merged with Discovery, things all changed. Cost-cutting measures (similar to what happened with “Batgirl”) are the driving force to throw away those completed scripts. And now with Walter Hamada gone, the plot of “Green Lantern” will now focus on a completely new character, John Stewart, yet another fan-favorite from the DCU. 

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The last bit of news about this overhaul that might concern fans is the fact that the report claims the budget for “Green Lantern” will be significantly less than what was originally planned. Apparently, the show was expected to cost around $120 million, which is a huge amount for a TV show. (For context, “House of the Dragon” cost $200 million.) While the final number isn’t known, the report says that the new version of “Green Lantern” will cost “significantly less” than the previous development.

One thing that should be made explicitly clear is that the report claims none of this has to do with James Gunn and Peter Safran taking over DC Studios. They don’t officially start work until November 1 and this is something that has been in the works for a while now. 

All that to say, we are still pretty damn far away from seeing any sort of “Green Lantern” TV series hitting HBO Max. All that hard work under Grahame-Smith is now destroyed and Berlanti is set to start over.