HBO’s Green Lantern show gets a greenlight (get it?)

HBO and DC Entertainment’s Green Lantern show has been draining its battery in development limbo since 2019, but on Tuesday, both companies made it official (again): Lanterns, a new iteration of the project, is headed to the cable network and Max streaming service.

Forget what you knew about the proposed big-budget Green Lantern show, which would be very little, because since 2019 there’s been next to nothing spoken about it. Now called Lanterns, the series “follows new recruit John Stewart and Lantern legend Hal Jordan, two intergalactic cops drawn into a dark, earth-based mystery as they investigate a murder in the American heartland.” Earth-based? I guess it’s true, Mogo doesn’t socialize.

The new series comes from a crack team of TV pros: Chris Mundy (True Detective: Night Country) is set as showrunner and executive producer. Damon Lindelof (Watchmen, The Leftovers, Lost) and famed comics writer Tom King (Mister Miracle, Supergirl) are co-writing the new series with Mundy, as well as executive producing.

In 2019, Greg Berlanti of Green Arrow and The Flash fame announced as the producer of an HBO Max Green Lantern series, promising that it would “be our biggest DC show ever made.” One streaming service rebrand and a restructuring at DC Entertainment later, and the promise is an entirely different show in 2024, now with the endorsement of current DC chiefs James Gunn and Peter Safran.

“We’re thrilled to bring this seminal DC title to HBO with Chris, Damon and Tom at the helm,” Gunn and Safran said in a statement. “John Stewart and Hal Jordan are two of DC’s most compelling characters, and LANTERNS brings them to life in an original detective story that is a foundational part of the unified DCU we’re launching next summer with ‘Superman.’”

Everything is connected. Gunn is in the middle of shooting Superman, which is due out on July 11, 2025. Meanwhile, King, who appears to become essential to the post-Zack Snyder DC movie/TV era, is one of the creatives shepherding many of the projects — including an adaptation of his own comic, Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow. In 2021, American Horror Story actor Finn Wittrock would appear as Guy Gardner in Berlanti’s series, but the casting doesn’t appear to have stuck — no casting is mentioned in HBO’s new press release. Gunn and Safran’s statement suggests we may meet the new Hal Jordan and John Stewart next summer. Or at least get hint of green splashed among the all the red, blue, and yellow. (Nathan Fillion is rumored to appear as Guy Gardner, which might miff Finn Wittrock.)

There is no premiere date set for Lanterns yet, but with a team of writers moving on the scripts and a rebooted DC universe set to launch in late 2024 with the premiere of Gunn’s in-universe cartoon Creature Commandos, expect more details soon. Let’s get that Kilowog fan-casting going now.