HBO Max Green Lantern Showrunner Has Some Eyebrow-Raising Comments About His Series

HBO Max's "Green Lantern" series is gearing up to become one of the biggest and most expensive superhero projects in television history. So it makes sense to have a showrunner who is a huge Green Lantern fan, right? Well, judging from recent comments made by "Green Lantern" showrunner and producer Seth Grahame-Smith, that's not exactly the case.

The live-action adaptation is expected to follow multiple members of DC's iconic Green Lantern Corps, which fights evil across the galaxy using magical rings. It will focus primarily on the original Green Lantern from the comics, Alan Scott, and the character's '80s incarnation Guy Gardner. 

According to The Hollywood Reporter, "Green Lantern" will be the most expensive project to date for producer Greg Berlanti, who helped helm The CW's Arrowverse. He and Grahame-Smith plan to "reinvent" the classic DC property "through a story spanning decades and galaxies, beginning on Earth in 1941," an official description reads. Fans have really been looking forward to what HBO Max plans to bring to the DC table with "Green Lantern," however, some have started to nurture a healthy skepticism after hearing Grahame-Smith's recent comments.

In what will certainly cause comic book fans to clutch their pearls, "Green Lantern" showrunner Seth Grahame-Smith admitted this week during an interview with Collider that he wasn't a fan of the intergalactic superhero when he was growing up. In fact, the man never read a "Green Lantern" title in his life until he started getting approached to do the show by HBO Max. 

"I'll admit, I wasn't like a huge comic book kid," Grahame-Smith said. "I was a huge movie kid. And so, my introduction to DC Comics came through the '89 Batman movie. When that movie came out, I was like, 'Oh, my God, Batman is the coolest,' and I started reading Batman comic books. But Green Lantern is something that, to be honest with you, just came to me later, by way of just talking about doing the show. The possibility of doing the show led me down a deep dive of Green Lantern lore. We'll see. It's gonna be awhile before the world gets to see that, but we are very, very busy at work, as we speak." It's a drag to hear that the project remains in its infancy, but perhaps the silver lining there is that Grahame-Smith will have plenty of time to immerse himself in decades of DC continuity and Green Lantern lore — if he hasn't already. 

The writer-producer told Collider that his telling of "Green Lantern" will be one of the most ambitious superhero projects of all time. "Yeah, that show is gigantic," he explained. "It has taken quite a bit of time to get to this point and it's just a big, big undertaking ... All I can say is that it's going really well."

HBO Max plans to release "Green Lantern" sometime in 2022.