Every time the DCEU stinger precedes a new movie, such as last week’s Black Adam, it’s a bit awkward to see Green Lantern in there. Whatever happened to him TV show, anyway? Three years have passed since Greg Berlanti boarded the HBO Max project for Warner Bros. That was followed by the additions of Jeremy Irvine and Finn Wittrock to lead the show, and Seth Grahame-Smith as writer. Well, whatever steps were made have all been radically changed now that Warner Bros. Discovery is running things.
According to THR, the exit of Walter Hamada as DC Films chief has led to this shake-up. For one thing, Seth Grahame-Smith is no longer involved, and the Green Lantern series will shift its focus. While Hamada was around, the character John Stewart was off-limits, but now the series will be centered on him. That’s something people have been clamoring for, anyway, as Stewart, an African-American, is the Lantern most prominently featured in many of the animated films and highly recognizable to casual fans.
Originally, the Green Lantern series was to follow Alan Scott and Guy Gardner as part of a large ensemble that will showcase other Lanterns, as well. Grahame-Smith completed eight total scripts before CEO David Zaslav arrived and everything changed.
This change in direction is also due to major cost-cutting measures to “significantly” reduce what had been a massive $120M budget. House of the Dragon costs around $200M so this would have been very expensive, especially with Warner Bros. Discovery looking to slash costs everywhere, just as they did to Batgirl.
So it’s back to square one, basically. And it’s worth noting that none of this has anything to do with the new DC Studios co-chiefs, James Gunn and Peter Safran. This was not their decision. But the big news coming out of this, at least for me, is that we get so see someone cast as John Stewart, and that’s pretty exciting.
