Scrapped “Green Lantern” Series Artwork

By
Garth Franklin
-
HBO

Years before James Gunn and Peter Safran took over at DC Studios, a new take on the “Green Lantern” property was in the works for HBO Max.

Marc Guggenheim, who co-created and co-showran “Arrow” and “Legends of Tomorrow,” was announced in October 2020 to pen the new series alongside Seth Grahame-Smith, who would serve as showrunner on the eight-episode series.

Some progress was made, but filming still hadn’t begun when that incarnation of the project was scrapped in October 2022. Within weeks, Gunn and Safran took over. Both Guggenheim and Grahame-Smith moved on, and plans were replaced by new ones that ultimately became this year’s HBO series “Lanterns”.

In the wake of that show’s recent season finale, one that has led to some arguments amongst the DC fandom in recent days, Guggenheim has shared several pieces of concept art from his scrapped live-action “Green Lantern” series which had the working title “Emerald Knights”.

The concept art shows off looks at two of the three lead characters of the show – namely Guy Gardner (Finn Wittrock), and an alien named Bree Jarta (uncast) who was newly created for the series. The third main character was to have been Alan Scott, played by Jeremy Irvine.

The artwork includes a shot of several Green Lantern characters in the midst of fighting unidentified aliens for what would’ve been the pilot’s opening sequence. Others show closer looks at the costume design.

Guggenheim confirms that, like “Lanterns,” the show would’ve spanned two time periods and used Manhunters as an antagonistic aspect. One time period would’ve been 1941 with Scott serving as a closeted FBI agent being blackmailed by J. Edgar Hoover; the other in 1984 with Wittrock’s Guy serving as a Rambo-esque embodiment of 1980s hyper-patriotism and hyper-masculinity.

Characters that would’ve been included were Jessica Cruz, Simon Baz, Kilowog, and Sinestro.