HBO Max Green Lantern show pivots to focus on John Stewart

Upheaval is the name of the game over at Warner Bros. Discovery ever since the two studios merged and David Zaslav became CEO. The cancellation of Batgirl, a movie that was already basically finished, made huge headlines. Zaslav’s team also called off J.J. Abrams’ HBO show Demimonde, reportedly because Abrams was asking for too big a budget. In general, Zaslav and company want to deemphasize HBO Max TV projects and do more on the big screen, all while saving money.

Still, some things have survived the purge, if much altered. For instance, back in 2019 Warner Bros. announced that a Green Lantern show was in the works. The series was set to revolve around Alan Scott, the first character in DC Comics to bear the name Green Lantern; and Guy Gardner, who was introduced later. If you don’t know, the Green Lanterns are a kind of intergalactic police force; all of them have special powers they get from their rings. There have been lots of Green Lanterns introduced over the years, so there are lots of directions for any series to go in.

Anyway, Seth Grahame-Smith wrote eight full episodes of the show, but after Zaslav came on and DC Films chief Walter Hamada left his post, a decision was made to retool the series. To start, the budget is expected to be slashed. Story-wise, Green Lantern will now revolve around John Stewart, one of DC’s first Black superheroes and the Green Lantern that I’m the most familiar with, since he was the one in the Justice League cartoon from the 2000s I used to watch when I was sick and home from school.

The Batman sequel isn’t coming out until 2025

To be completely honest, this makes me more interested in the Green Lantern show, not less, because people like familiarity and John Stewart is literally the only Green Lantern I know. But who knows if this will turn out to be a good move in the long run? There’s a lot of changes being made at Warner Bros. Discovery right now. They just hired James Gunn to be their own Kevin Feige, but for DC; Henry Cavill is coming back as Superman…I’m in “wait and see” mode on most of this.

In other DC news, Deadline reports that Antonio Campos will be serving as showrunner on the upcoming Arkham Asylum series. This show is set in the world of The Batman and will presumably hang out with Gotham City super-criminals as they cool their heels in fiction’s most famous sanitarium/prison.

And speaking of The Batman, Variety reports that we won’t get a sequel to Matt Reeves’ reboot of the franchise until 2025. The gears are moving slowly on all things DC TV.

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