HBO Max's Green Lantern Series Has Flipped The Script To Now Focus On John Stewart

In 2019, DC announced its plan to create a live-action "Green Lantern" TV series (via The Hollywood Reporter), starring the characters Guy Gardner (Fin Wittrock) and Alan Scott (Jeremy Irvine), the latter of which being notable as one of DC's only openly gay superheroes. At the time, the series was promised to be the biggest, most expensive project that HBO Max had ever taken on. 

To say that the excitement was palpable would be an understatement. The Green Lantern Corps (space cops with magic rings that manifest physical constructs charged by willpower) have been, for the most part, absent from the larger scale DC projects, save one ... infamous exception. 

Now, in 2022, after surviving through what we may gently call DC and Warner Brother's less stable years, the untitled "Green Lantern" series is still in the works, but with a significant change to the core story. Instead of following Guy Gardner and Alan Scott, the project will instead focus on one entirely different superhero. 

As shared by The Hollywood Reporter, DC's upcoming (a word which must be understood VERY loosely) "Green Lantern" TV series will now center around John Stewart, the Green Lantern who was made globally famous by his prominent featuring in the early 2000s animated "Justice League" series. The character of John Stewart is also notable in that he's one of DC's first Black superheroes, having been created in the 1970s. 

This redevelopment is no small matter — a full season of eight episodes had already been written by Seth Grahame-Smith, who departed the series as both a writer and showrunner after the overhaul was decided. It's a bit sad in the sense that Grahame-Smith held onto the project throughout all of DC and Warner Brothers' previous massive internal restructurings, but the man can hardly be blamed for saying goodbye after his entire connection to the production was to be scrapped. 

Interestingly, this news is not correlated to the announcement of James Gunn and Peter Safran taking over as co-CEOs of DC studios, as neither are due to start their new roles until the first of November. With that in mind, DC has yet to provide a clear impetus for the change other than that the previous iteration was tied in part to the exiting executives. 

This announcement is still fresh, so there is no news about casting for the role of John Stewart yet. And there's no news regarding whether Wittrock and Irvine will remain attached to the series at this point in time.