James Gunn and Peter Safran unveiled their new slate of DC movies and TV shows today, and one long-gestating project is nowhere to be seen.
One of the DC television projects we had most been looking forward to was a Green Lanterns live-action series from prolific creator Greg Berlanti.
Berlanti was behind such DC TV projects as Supergirl, The Flash, Black Lightning, Legends of Tomorrow, Titans, Doom Patrol, and Stargirl. Green Lanterns was set to be his next big show for HBO, and he was planning on making it gay.
However, with the new slate of DC projects announced, his show has been officially canceled and replaced with a new, very different Green Lantern project.
The new show, titled Lanterns, is based on True Detective according to Safran. “It’s terrestrial-based, it’s got two of our favorite Green Lanterns –Hal Jordan and John Stewart…it plays a really big role in the main story that we’re telling across our film and television,” he said. “This is a very important show for us.”
Berlanti’s series, which was to be showrun by Seth Grahame-Smith before he left the project last fall, would’ve starred Finn Wittrock as Guy Gardner and Jeremy Irvine as gay Green Lantern Alan Scott.
The ten-episode first season was going to be an intergalactic journey that focused on multiple Lanterns, including Scott and Gardner, Jessica Cruz, and Simon Baz.
While we’ll be losing a gay Green Lantern, at least two of the projects announced will likely have some gay content.
The series Paradise Lost will focus on the Amazons of Wonder Woman’s home island Themyscira before Wonder Woman was born. As it's an island of only women, you can be sure there will be some sapphic happenings.
DC also announced an Authority film. For those unfamiliar, The Authority is a more brutal and violent superhero team than the Avengers or Justice League. Two of its most famous members are the gay Batman and Superman stand-ins Midnighter and Apollo. While Superman and Batman have only had decades of sexual tension, these two antiheroes are canonically a couple.
While Berlanti is distancing himself from the DC universe, he’ll still be with Warner Bros. for a long time. In January, Berlanti signed a new four-year exclusive overall deal for Berlanti Productions to remain at Warner Bros. for its TV projects until at least 2027.