HBO Max abandons gay Green Lantern in upcoming show
British actor, Jeremy Irvine, had already been cast in the role.
HBO Max’s live-action Green Lantern series will no longer focus on the openly gay superhero, Alan Scott.
It follows a number of changes at HBO and its parent company Warner Bros, according to reports, that have seen existing plans and casting ditched.
The new focus will be on John Stewart, one of DC’s first Black superheroes, according to The Hollywood Reporter (THR)
Additionally, writer and showrunner Seth Grahame-Smith has departed the project having written eight episodes.
When HBO announced Green Lantern in 2019 Arrowverse creator Greg Berlanti shared that it would be the “biggest DC show ever made” and it was poised to be the most expensive ever DC show with an estimated $120 million budget.
The Love, Simon filmmaker is still set to produce the show. He further hyped the show saying it would be “unlike anything seen on television.”
Finn Wittrock and Jeremy Irvine had been cast as Green Lanterns Guy Gardner and Alan Scott respectively. Now, neither actor remains signed on to Green Lantern, as reported by THR.
American Horror Story’s Wittrock confirmed his casting on Instagram in 2021, writing: “Beyond excited to join the Green Lantern universe as Guy Gardner. Coming to HBO Max in the not-too-distant future.”
Irvine, who starred in Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, would be playing a reimagined version of Scott where he was a 1941 closeted federal agent.
In the original story, created by Martin Nodell in 1940, Scott has supernatural powers of flight, hypnosis, and green flame projection as he battles dark criminality following World War II.
Following the reintroduction of Scott in 2012, the character was introduced into the DC Universe as a gay man who had never married a woman.
However, the character was more recently announced as canonically gay in DC Comics with twin children named Jade and Obsidian.
“Back in an earlier time I kept a part of myself hidden from my friends and peers,” he tells his adult kids in the issue, written by James Tynion IV and Stephen Byrne.
“I even let myself get married a few times to women I did love with all my mind, but I did that knowing there was something about myself I was hiding away.”
He later adds: “I let a few of the boys in the society know back in the day. And I’ve had a good deal of… friends over the years.”
While our hopes for a show focused on a gay Green Lantern may have been dashed, we’re holding out hope Scott still makes an appearance in the reworked HBO show.