I wrote about Cindy Holland’s emerging streaming strategy at Paramount and how the company’s delayed deal has opened a WBD exec poaching season, and I interviewed Furious showrunner Liz Meriwether and broke down the industry debate over Netflix’s binge model.
When Lanterns premieres Sunday on HBO, it will cap a nearly seven-year journey to the screen that has included at least four takes, two creative teams and more executive changes than Green Lantern himself could navigate.
The series’ debut is a milestone for James Gunn and Peter Safran’s stewardship of the DC Universe, which has been on a roller coaster at the cinema — with 2025’s Superman high and this summer’s Supergirl low. The IP is among the most consequential assets at stake in Paramount Skydance’s planned $111 billion merger with Warner Bros. Discovery. Gunn and Safran laid out big TV plans in 2023 after they stepped up as DC Studios chiefs, announcing multiple series, including several around characters that had never been onscreen. Lanterns, starring Kyle Chandler (Friday Night Lights) and Aaron Pierre (Syfy/DC’s Krypton), is the first live-action scripted series to be developed under the pair — who themselves created DC’s other HBO Max entry, Peacemaker.
Lanterns hails from showrunner Chris Mundy (Ozark) and exec producers Damon Lindelof (HBO/DC’s Watchmen) and comics scribe Tom King, who were tapped in May 2024 to lead development of a more grounded, True Detective-style version of the Green Lantern story. Lanterns, one of the first projects Gunn and Safran announced in January 2023 as they outlined their vision for DC, essentially replaced the long-gestating version of Green Lantern that Greg Berlanti had been working on since 2019 when he was the reigning king of DC’s TV efforts with the wildly successful Arrowverse that consisted of more than a dozen shows.
Ultimately, Berlanti, Arrow collaborator Marc Guggenheim and Seth Grahame-Smith (The Lego Batman Movie) would complete eight scripts — an entire first season of the show — before HBO Max executives balked at a pricey space-set story. “We kept getting these notes saying they want True Detective with power rings,” Guggenheim tells me. “Ultimately, that wasn’t the show that we were interested in giving them.”
Reps for HBO declined comment.
In today’s column, I reveal:
- How Berlanti and Guggenheim hoped for a Green Lantern “redemption story” after their 2011 film starring Ryan Reynolds flopped
- The tortured path of their multiple takes and the creative mismatch with Gunn and Safran
- Why Berlanti’s DC exit was blessed at WBD’s highest levels
- SCOOP! Two shows from Gunn and Safran’s noisy early slate that are dead, plus other pitches they’ve rejected
- How Gunn and Safran collaborate with HBO chief Casey Bloys as the trio together decided the fate of Booster Gold
- Why HBO hasn’t renewed Lanterns — but already hired a co-showrunner for season two (and two key writers who are out)
- What’s still in DC’s TV pipeline and creators in the hot seat
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