Marc Guggenheim’s first-ever feature film screenplay credit came on infamous 2011 bomb Green Lantern, which was far from an auspicious start. Widely regarded as one of the worst comic book adaptations of the modern era, it also flopped spectacularly at the box office, and leading man Ryan Reynolds hasn’t stopped mocking it for the last decade.
Another one of the scribes on Martin Campbell’s dud was Greg Berlanti, but the duo clearly didn’t let the abjectly terrible performance of Green Lantern affect either their creativity or desire to keep tackling superhero stories. As co-creators of the Arrowverse, they helped spearhead one of television’s premiere mythologies, and things ultimately came full circle when they were tasked by HBO Max to develop a new streaming series based on the Green Lantern Corps.
In a new interview, Guggenheim explained how he wanted to ensure that the latest iteration of Green Lantern stood apart from both The CW’s roster of shows and the movie that Reynolds only recently referred to as a crease in the anus of the universe.
“Green Lantern, we’re approaching it as doing it distinct from the Arrowverse. It’s not going to have any creative tendrils. But yeah, myself, Greg Berlanti, Lamont Magee, Geoff Johns, we’ve all got experience in the Arrowverse. I’m sure that in some way, shape, or form, the sensibilities but also a lot of lessons, we learned a lot of lessons across doing these shows both from a creative standpoint and a production standpoint. I’m sure we’ll be bringing that experience to Green Lantern as we get deeper and deeper into the series.
Greg and I have worked together for 16 years now. We’ve worked together on a lot of different things, some DC-related, some not DC-related. He came to me years ago, now, with the idea of, ‘DC is letting us do a Green Lantern series for their streaming service, would you want to be involved?’. And, I said, of course. Because of the movie and that experience, there’s a strong desire on my part and on Greg’s part to get right what had been gotten wrong ten years ago.”
Let’s hope that HBO Max’s Green Lantern hits the ground running, then, because even the slightest creative or narrative misstep and you can guarantee that the comparisons to the 2011 disaster will be getting lobbed around with reckless abandon.
It’s not like Guggenheim and Berlanti haven’t proven their chops when it comes to small screen superhero mythologies, though, and WarnerMedia’s platform is going all-in when it comes to developing as much DC content as possible, so there’s evidently a lot of confidence in the project. As for the fans, they’ll just be desperate to see Green Lantern done justice in live-action at long last having been burned so badly before.
