DCU's "Green Lantern" Series Finds Home at HBO

HBO has picked up “Lanterns,” the first live-action series created expressly for DC Studios under co-chairmen/co-CEOs James Gunn and Peter Safran. 

The series has been given an eight-episode, straight-to-series order by the network, with Chris Mundy (“True Detective: Night Country,” “Ozark”) serving as showrunner and exec producer.

Damon Lindelof (“Watchmen,” “The Leftovers”) and Tom King (“Mister Miracle,” “Supergirl”), who will serve as executive producers and co-write “Lanterns” with Mundy. 

Warner Bros. TV is producing with DC Studios and HBO; the show is based on the DC comic “Green Lantern.”

“Lanterns” will focus on two of the best known members of the Green Lantern Corps.: Hal Jordan (the test pilot first played on screen by Ryan Reynolds in 2011’s “Green Lantern”) and John Stewart (an ex-marine and one of DC’s first Black superheroes), who investigates a mystery that Safran said, “plays a really big role leading us into the main story that we’re telling across our film and television.”

Nathan Fillion will play a different Green Lantern member, Guy Gardner, in Gunn’s feature “Superman,” which will premiere in July 2025. 

The project is separate from a Green Lantern series developed by Greg Berlanti for Max, with Finn Wittrock and Jeremy Scott set to star as Guy Gardner and Alan Scott, respectively. Berlanti’s Green Lantern series is no longer moving forward.

“Lanterns” would have originally been labeled a Max Original, under the previous plan to place all Warner Bros.-originated I.P. under the Max label. But under a new delineation major projects like “Lanterns” will now fall under the HBO Originals brand.

Gunn and Safran first announced their intention to make a “Green Lantern” series in Jan. 2023, when they presented their inaugural slate of titles for film and TV; at the time, Safran called the project “a huge HBO-quality event” that is “very much in the vein of ‘True Detective.’” (It replaced Greg Berlanti's “Green Lantern”.) 

The first DC series, the animated “Creature Commandos,” is expected to debut in late 2024, followed by Season 2 of “Peacemaker,” which Gunn created prior to taking the helm at DC Studios. 

“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 joint 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.’” 

Green Lantern

Green Lantern