Stephen Amell might be best known for playing Oliver Queen on The CW’s Arrow for the past six seasons, but he could have portrayed another DC hero if things had turned out differently. And that’s because the actor revealed at this weekend’s Awesome Con that he once auditioned to play Booster Gold, the time-traveling superhero from the future, “way back when.”
This is interesting news. Though Amell’s “way back when” comment doesn’t narrow down the time frame, we can probably nail it down to two possible occasions. Firstly, Booster Gold made his live-action debut on Smallville back in 2011. As this was another CW show, it makes sense that Amell might have auditioned for the one-off role, which ultimately went to Eric Martsolf.
Alternatively, Amell could be referring to the movie that’s currently stuck in development hell at Warner Bros. Arrowverse exec producer Greg Berlanti has been attached to the project for years, so we can see Amell using his connections to try his hand at playing a DC hero on the big screen as well. After all, the actor previously attempted to break into the comic book movie genre before in 2016’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, in which he played vigilante Casey Jones.
Circling back to Booster Gold though, and after a long while where we didn’t hear anything, Berlanti recently confirmed that the movie’s still on the cards. The producer, and possible director of the project, revealed that he and The Flash screenwriter Zack Stentz had handed in a draft of the script to WB brass and were still waiting for any updates on whether the studio wanted to move forward with it.
There’s been no further news beyond that, but while we wait to see if Booster Gold will materialize any time soon, Stephen Amell continues to play the Emerald Archer every Thursday night on The CW.
