HBO’s Green Lantern Series Finally Casts Hal Jordan

After a near-endless casting and development process, it looks like DC’s Green Lantern series is finally almost ready to begin production.

HBO and Max have spent years developing a show based on the classic DC Comics sci-fi property. Their version has always been described as a kind of police procedural set in outer space, but exactly which Lanterns are the focus (and who is doing the focusing behind the camera) has been in flux. The latest version of the show, called Lanterns, is from DC writer Tom King, Damon Lindelof, and Chris Munday, who is the showrunner on the series.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, they have picked Friday Night Lights’ Kyle Chandler to play Hal Jordan, the most famous of all the Green Lanterns, on the series.

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THR describes the show as having “a gritty, True Detective vibe” and will focus on an older Hal Jordan mentoring “reluctantly mentoring a younger Lantern, John Stewart,” with DC reportedly looking for a younger actor to play opposite Chandler, who is best known as the inspirational high school football coach Eric Taylor from five seasons of the great NBC drama. On the big screen, Chandler has appeared in Argo, Zero Dark Thirty, and Godzilla: King of the Monsters.

DC previously adapted Green Lantern into a notorious big-budget disaster starring Ryan Reynolds as a younger version of Hal Jordan. A few years later, Warner Bros. began looking into the possibility of a Green Lantern TV show. The version of the show that first came together would have been produced by Seth Grahame-Smith, and was going to star Finn Wittrock and Jeremy Irvine as several other members of the Green Lantern Corps, Guy Gardner and Alan Scott. That iteration of the series fell apart in the fall of 2022.

This new Lanterns is intended to be part of the new DC Universe headed by James Gunn. Per THR, it is looking to begin production early in 2025.