Batgirl may have been told to suddenly hang up her cowl, but HBO Max’s live-action Green Lantern series is still on track to fly high.
In the wake of the recent WarnerBros Discovery shake-up — in addition to the nearly finished Batgirl movie getting unceremoniously shelved, HBO Max is merging with Discovery+ come Summer 2023, and DC is taking a harder look at its theatrical slate — and amid much rampant rumor-mongering/speculation, many are fretting about the fate of, among other things, DC’s small-screen projects.
But an HBO Max spokesperson told TVLine on Tuesday that the streamer’s Green Lantern series is “very much alive” and “definitely moving forward.” (That said, the ambitious production might not realistically bow until 2024, I’m hearing.)
Co-written and exec-produced by the prolific Greg Berlanti and Arrow/Legends of Tomorrow co-creator Marc Guggenheim, Green Lantern (working title) will reinvent the classic DC property through a story spanning decades and galaxies, beginning on Earth in 1941 with the very first Green Lantern, secretly gay FBI agent Alan Scott (played byJeremy Irvine), and 1984, with cocky alpha male Guy Gardner (American Horror Story‘s Finn Wittrock) and half-alien Bree Jarta. They’ll be joined by other Lanterns “from comic book favorites to never-before-seen heroes.”
When the DC superhero project was announced back in October 2019, Berlanti teased that Green Lantern “promises to be our biggest DC show ever made.”
LEGO Batman Movie scribe Seth Grahame-Smith, who will serve as co-writer/EP alongside Berlanti and Guggenheim, is the showrunner, while additional EPs include Geoff Johns, Sarah Schechter, David Madden and David Katzenberg.
Where stand HBO Max’s other DC series, including Titans, Harley Quinn and others? In short, TVLine hears that while DC may be making some tough calls as it carefully considers a 10-year film plan, HBO Max’s IP-driven, DC-based fare remains a huge priority.