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Lanterns, the next chapter in James Gunn and Peter Safran’s DC Universe, will premiere on HBO in 2026. The superhero drama will feature Hal Jordan, John Stewart, Guy Gardner, and other members of the Green Lantern Corps in an exciting series that has been described as True Detective with power rings. It’s been a long road to Lanterns, and that road started years before Gunn and Safran got their jobs at DC Studios.

In 2019 it was reported that Greg Berlanti was developing a Green Lantern series for HBO Max. Berlanti had previously co-written the screenplay for the critically panned 2011 Green Lantern film, but since then, he had found success bringing DC properties to television. By 2019, Berlanti had developed many of the Arrowverse shows, including Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, and Legends of Tomorrow. That’s quite an impressive track record, which would lead one to believe that the series would be a winner. However, Berlanti’s version of Lanterns never got off the ground.

The eight-episode Green Lantern series you'll never see from HBO Max

Marc Guggenheim worked with Berlanti on developing the series and wrote some of the scripts. According to Guggenheim, their version of the series stalled because of creative differences with HBO.

“At the end of the day, the reason why our Green Lantern show didn't work was we wanted to do something very different than what HBO wanted to do,” Marc Guggenheim tells Popverse. “We wrote all eight scripts, and we also did a lot of amazing concept designs and costume designs. I'm really proud of the work everyone did on our version of the series."

“Honestly, we just kept getting notes back from HBO, and we were like, 'It kind of feels like what they really want is True Detective with power rings.' And then, lo and behold, when they announce it, they're like, 'It's True Detective with power rings.' And I thought, 'You guys have the money. You have the checkbooks. If that's what you want, you should go find people to make that show.'"

Guggenheim says the series he was working on would’ve felt more like a space epic and incorporated many iconic pieces of Green Lantern lore.

“They weren't interested in what we wanted, which was a multi-generational two-timeline space epic. We had Oa. Francois Audouy, our production designer, works with James Mangold. He's James Mangold's go-to guy. Maybe if you get enough drinks in me, I'll eventually post Francois' brilliant concept art. We had gorgeous versions of Oa, the Lanterns, and the way the constructs worked.”

Correcting fan speculation that the Green Lanterns show was connected to the Arrowverse

At the time the show was announced, there was some speculation amongst fans that it would be a part of the Arrowverse continuity. The speculation grew when the character John Diggle (who was hinted at being their version of John Stewart) found a glowing green box after a meteorite landed on Earth in the 2020 Arrow series finale. Guggenheim, who was a writer and executive producer on Arrow, clarifies that Diggle was never part of their plans for the series, and the scene in the series finale was about fulfilling a promise they made to the fans.

“I wish I could say it was that specific. It was more along the lines of; we just kept pushing. We kept seeing how much we can get away with. When Diggle got his new costume in season eight, there's an original design that I put on my newsletter of his outfit that was a very clear nod to Green Lantern. And DC was like, 'You can't do that.'”

Although the Arrow series finale aired in January 2020 after the Green Lantern series was announced, the episode had been written and filmed first. In other words, Diggle finding the box wasn’t setting up the Green Lantern show, because at the time, there was no show planned.

“In fact, even the meteorite with the glowing green box, that's something I had pitched and gotten approval for years and years earlier. When I wrote it into the script, into the finale, I got the phone call saying we're not comfortable with you doing this. And I said, 'I'm sorry. You were comfortable a couple of years ago. I made a commitment to David Ramsey. I feel like at this point I've made a bit of a commitment to the fans, even though they don't know the specifics of what I'm planning. I've got to do this.' And they were good about it. They were like, 'Okay, yeah, we respect that.' I wish I could say it was with an eye towards setting up an Arrowverse Green Lantern pilot, because there was no Green Lantern pilot to be had.”

“When HBO had originally come to Greg Berlanti about doing a Green Lantern show it was with the clear not to do it as a spinoff of the Arrowverse. They wanted it to be its own thing. I called up David, because I didn't want him to find out about it from someone else. He could not have been more gracious. He was just totally understanding.”

The lessons learned from the 2011 Green Lantern movie with Ryan Reynolds

Guggenheim jokes about the failure of the 2011 Green Lantern film, which he co-wrote, and how he and Berlanti took the lessons they learned from that into their proposed series.

“Greg and I brought all of the lessons we learned from the critically acclaimed Academy Award-nominated Green Lantern movie. We brought all those lessons in. But at the end of the day, like I said, it doesn't become about good or bad, or quality, or lack of quality. It really becomes about alignment of vision, and alignment of artistic intent. At the end of the day, HBO was very clear in terms of what they wanted. And we were equally clear in terms of what we weren't interested in doing.”

“None of this is to say I think 'True Detective with power rings' is the wrong take. I'm just saying that wasn't the take that we were interested in. We just had something very different in mind. And that happens. It's the classic Hollywood creative differences, but I'm really proud of the eight scripts that we wrote. And I'm really proud of all the pre-production work and all the visual development work that we did. A lot of people work for two years, working really hard to bring this thing into fruition.”

The series got so far into production that it was preparing to begin filming in 2022. However, the creative differences couldn’t be reconciled.

“We were super close. We had stages, we had a director, and we had some cast lined up. We were very close. But I've been doing this long enough that I know that you just can't muscle through something if the studio isn't behind it. At some point, you're going to get that phone call where you're told it's pencils down.”

Guggenheim says he’s not bitter about what happened, and he believes it’s ultimately for the best. “At the end of the day, I'm glad that Warner Brothers put it out of its misery. Rather than try to note it into what they wanted, they recognized that they were never going to get there with us.”

Lanterns premieres on HBO in 2026.

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