Warner Bros. has been making some…questionable business decisions as of late regarding their media, and it appears that the upcoming Green Lantern series for HBO Max is going to be part of that. How else do you explain them completely throwing out the scripts of the 8 episodes that are already complete? I guess they just want to further extend the production time.
Warner Bros. and the Rework of the Green Lantern Corps?
The Hollywood Reporter just reported that the upcoming and very long-developed (since late 2019, no less) Green Lantern series for HBO Max is now going to be “redeveloped”. What this means in practice is that Warner Bros. is throwing out everything they’ve developed for the show so far, including 8 complete episode scripts by Seth Grahame-Smith (Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, The Lego Batman Movie, It (2017)). In fact, Grahame-Smith will be departing the series entirely despite having been the series’ showrunner and writer.
So why this massive shakeup? Well, according to The Hollywood Reporter, Grahame-Smith’s departure (some say he chose to leave) is part of a massive overhaul of what Warner Bros. had originally been planning for their Green Lantern series. Their original plan called for the HBO Max series to focus on 2 Green Lanterns: Guy Gardner and Alan Scott. The latter would’ve even been the first openly gay Green Lantern in TV history. Heck, Warner Bros. even cast Finn Wittrock (Ratched) and Jeremy Irvine (Treadstone) as the respective Green Lanterns already.
Now though, apparently Warner Bros. wants the HBO Max series to focus on a different Green Lantern: John Stewart. Why this one in particular? Apparently, because Stewart is one of DC‘s first black superheroes. That’s all we got as a reason, courtesy of The Hollywood Reporter. There’s nothing else about this new series because of just how recently they started redeveloping it. We’ll just have to wait for Warner Bros. or DC Studios to give us more news of this later.
Speaking of which: The Hollywood Reporter also clarifies that this massive redevelopment of the Green Lantern series has absolutely nothing to do with the recent hiring of James Gunn and Peter Safran as the leaders of DC Studios (formerly DC Films). The duo doesn’t even start working there until November 1, 2022. So blaming them for this is more than a bit unfair. If you want someone to blame, look no further than the company hiring them.
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Source: The Hollywood Reporter
