We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: HBO is making a Green Lantern TV show. Announced earlier today, HBO has spoken the oath and given the green light to Lanterns, an eight-episode series written by HBO veteran and geek-culture pariah Damon Lindelof and comics legend Tom King. Ozark showrunner Chris Mundy will run the show, which promises multiple lanterns and an “earth-based mystery.”
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Though we’d all like Lanterns to take place in the lighting section of Home Depot, it will, alas, follow rookie Lantern John Stewart and grizzled veteran of the Corp Hal Jordan as they “investigate a murder in the American heartland.” Nothing says “Green Lantern adventure” quite like the logline “two intergalactic cops drawn into a dark, earth-based mystery.” Still, we’re starting to understand why HBO hired Mundy, an executive producer on True Detective: Night Country. If there was ever a Green Lantern series that sounds like True Detective, it’s Lanterns.
HBO’s Green Lantern project has been up and down ever since Dwayne Johnson changed the hierarchy of power in the DCEU. Originally a series by Arrow-verse creator Greg Berlanti and Pride And Prejudice And Zombies author Seth Grahame-Smith, the series went into redevelopment days after Johnson attempted to force the importance of Black Adam by secretly casting Henry Cavill in a cameo. But the disappointing response to Black Adam was effectively the straw that broke the Snyderverse’s back. WBD announced the James Gunn and Peter Safran reboot days later, making Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom the series’ swan song. For their part, Gunn and Safran are “thrilled to bring this seminal DC title to HBO,” calling Lanterns an “original detective story that is a foundational part of the unified DCU we’re launching next summer with Superman.”
Speaking of Superman, that film already has a direct connection to the Green Lantern Corp. Nathan Fillion will play the red-haired, asshole Green Lantern, Guy Gardner, in Gunn’s film. Whatever Gunn and Safran have in mind for a “unified DCU,” the Lanterns are a significant part of it.