The annual winter Television Critics Association press tour is in full swing, and tonight, Warner Bros./HBO’s upcoming streaming service HBO Max dropped a ton of news, some of it courtesy of Sarah Aubrey, HBO Max’s head of originals.
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Aubrey dropped some details about Greg Berlanti’s upcoming “Green Lantern” series being exclusively made for the streaming platform. Aubrey said they are in the “early stages of talking” to Berlanti and the series “will span several decades and focus on the origin stories of two major Green Lanterns on Earth,” according to The Wrap.
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Which two Lanterns are being discussed unknown, but clearly fans will be hoping to see Hal Jordan and John Stewart, the two major Earth versions of the character in the comics (but the unhinged Guy Gardner would be more interesting).
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Sinestro, a major villain from the comics, and featured in the 2010 “Green Lantern” movie starring Ryan Reynolds, will also play a role in the series. Concurrent to this show, DC Films and Warner Bros (who owns HBO Max) are working on a “Green Lantern Corps” movie, so as The CW’s “The Flash” show and DC Films Flash played by Ezra Miller in the movies, there could conceivably two actors playing the same or similar version of the characters on television and in a movie at the same time.
Before you get too excited though, know that Berlanti is the architect of most of the superhero shows on The CW, the Arrowverse essentially which includes “Arrow, “The Flash,” “Supergirl,” “Legends Of Tomorrow,” “Batwoman,” “Superman & Lois,” and the recent Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover special (that also featured Ezra Miller in a surprise cameo last night). Berlanti may be one of the most powerful people on TV, and he may oversee a massive empire, but these shows are all frankly, fairly bad, campy and not taken very seriously. For WB, it’s ratings and keeping these properties going on multiple outlets to generate revenue, but no one really anticipates these series like they do one of their counterparts on the big screen—a lot of is filler that kills time and keeps the intellectual property churning and making money.
These shows are also marred by low budgets and “Green Lantern,” the movie was a notoriously pricy affair because nearly everything is VFX and CGI. Some of this “Green Lantern” show is said to be set on Earth, likely for that very reason, but if you’re a fan of the character, you may want to put on a realistic expectations cap now.
Berlanti is developing “Strange Adventures,” a DC Super Hero anthology series that will feature characters from across the DC canon. He was also rumored to be producing a “Booster Gold” adaptation for the big screen, but that’s never transpired and one assumes if it ever comes to pass, the character will stay moored to Berlanti’s TV empire.