Fifteen years after Ryan Reynolds brought Hal Jordan to life in Green Lantern, there’s a new superhero in town.
As part of James Gunn and Peter Safran’s revamped DC Universe, Kyle Chandler is starring as Hal in the new series Lanterns, with the legendary hero showing new Green Lantern recruit John Stewart (played by Aaron Pierre) the ropes as they investigate a murder in Nebraska. The series has drawn early comparisons to True Detective and is quite a different take than the Reynolds film, which famously bombed at the box office.
At the L.A. premiere on Thursday, co-creator Tom King admitted he has “a soft spot” for the Green Lantern movie but “that was big and cosmic and huge — let’s take that energy but turn it into a character study and bring it down so that we can give something that has scale and power and energy in a different sort of way.” Chandler also emphasized when it came to portraying Hal Jordan, “I did my own thing” in comparison to Reynolds’ version.
“The main thing was to get the relationship down with Aaron and us to figure out what our parameters were, what we wanted to do and to get that relationship opened up and have fun together, and luckily that worked well,” Chandler continued. “We get on really easily so that was imperative.”
King recalled the series‘ origins, which began with a meeting with Gunn and Safran as the pair were inspired by Damon Lindelof’s Watchmen series and said they needed “a 9 o’clock HBO show for superheroes.” King pitched doing a cop story after the success of shows like True Detective and Mare of Easttown in that slot, and before long, he and fellow co-creators Lindelof and Chris Mundy came together to develop Lanterns.
Aside from Chandler signing on (drawn in by the script, as he admitted that if someone had just described the series to him “I don’t think I’d have had much interest, but when I read the script and read how they did this, it was far different than anything I expected”), Pierre rounded out the central duo, following a previous relationship with Gunn from years earlier.
The filmmaker previously revealed that Pierre was in the running to play Adam Warlock in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, a role that eventually went to Will Poulter. Now the two have reunited — Pierre’s Jon Stewart will also appear in Gunn’s Superman sequel Man of Tomorrow — as the actor said, “James is an extraordinarily talented individual and it’s been a gift to get to know him creatively — as a collaborator, as a director, as a writer, as a creator in general. It’s also been a pleasure to get to know him and develop the beginnings of a friendship. He’s a blast to be around and we look forward to many, many more years of creative collaboration.”
Lanterns premieres Sunday on HBO.
