Green Lantern Series Actor Jeremy Irvine Leaves Status of the HBO Max Project in Doubt But Showrunner Seth Grahame-Smith Is Optimistic

JB Augustine |

May 30, 2022

Source: Green Lantern (2011), Warner Bros.

The HBO Max Green Lantern series that comes to us from Greg Berlanti and Geoff Johns has been in the works for a few years. In recent memory, casting and narrative details made it seem like the show was just on the horizon and ready for a production start date.

War Horse actor Jeremy Irvine was given the role of Alan Scott, the Golden Age Green Lantern who was retconned into a gay man. As a legacy character, he is thought to be a focal point of the show in one timeline. However, that’s only on paper as it turns out, even after all this time.

Irvine, despite having a costume made and getting ready to film an episode or two, knows about as much as we do as far as when shooting is supposed to commence.

“As far as I know, there’s not a firm start date yet. But when they offered me the role, they did say it was going to be about two or three months to make the outfit. Now they’re gonna have to fit my paunch into it,” he said to the UK’s Metro Entertainment.

But EP and showrunner Seth Grahame-Smith, though his comments are from last year, is more confident. “Yeah, that show is gigantic,” he said to Collider in an update. He added that the show is a “big undertaking” that’s “going really well” and will take a while.

“It has taken quite a bit of time to get to this point and it’s just a big, big undertaking. It’s going really well. All I can say is that it’s going really well and there are gonna be Green Lanterns in it, and it’s gonna be on HBO Max,” said Grahame-Smith.

That sounds sufficiently open-and-shut but Geekosity isn’t buying it. In their coverage, they say, “Executive Producer Greg Berlanti announced his HBO Max Green Lantern show in 2019. Three years later, we barely have any idea what the plot will be.”

They note the casting news, including Finn Wittrock as Guy Gardner, but feel too that “Otherwise, the years of teasing went nowhere.” There are some roles that haven’t been cast or announced as of yet and it hasn’t been confirmed beyond a doubt that the show will have Hal Jordan and John Stewart.

Either one’s presence could dictate if the show is set in the DCEU which is extremely unlikely when Warner Bros. urged the scrubbing of Wayne T. Carr as Stewart from Zack Snyder’s Justice League. If Carr, or David Ramsey, for the sake of argument, was being saved for HBO Max, WB would’ve come right out and said it.

Scheduling conflicts for everyone involved – from Grahame-Smith to Berlanti – might also be an issue. Grahame-Smith is also involved at the moment with Kung Fury 2, the animated Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai, and Beetlejuice 2. The latter is something else announced as of late that is a long time in the making but, likewise, a mystery.

Berlanti inked deals with Netflix and Warner to produce more content that put him in charge of dozens of shows should they come to fruition. He also, unfortunately for himself, has to deal with the culling at The CW and the former streaming giant. His programming might get axed before any of it gets going as wokeness is finally making Hollywood go broke.

WB Discovery’s new CEO David Zaslav and his spendthrift mentality figure in at this point. The ambitious exec is trimming fat but, moreover, reportedly wants a new Green Lantern movie, which could hold up the HBO series until he gets what he wants.

Notable here is Geoff Johns who is still developing his Green Lantern Corps movie through his Mad Ghost production label. Desires could hypothetically converge and kick GLC to the front of the priority line.

That’s only a postulation, obviously, although it’s equally speculative that the ring-slinging streaming series is getting shelved. Maybe instead everything gets greenlit – GLC, more Snyderverse, HBO Max – and the Lantern’s light shines bright for DC. Such an outcome is a stellar idea.

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