For Warner Brothers, it’s all going according to plan. Over the weekend we told you about the WB’s plan to use the JLA movie as a launching pad for a whole host of new superhero solo movies. On Sunday we learned that they’d greenlit a Flash solo movie helmed by Wedding Crashers director David Dobkin, and now it’s Green Lantern’s turn.
Variety says Greg Berlanti has been hired to co-write and direct a live-action, Green Lantern solo movie. Berlanti’s only prior directing experience was a movie I’ve never heard of called The Broken Hearts Club in 2000. Since then, he’s been writing and producing angsty, second-rate television dramas for networks like the CW. Brothers and Sisters, Everwood, Jack and Bobby, and Dawson’s Creek all pop off his resume.
We’ve all joked about how the next step for Hollywood is to turn one of their superhero franchises into a knockoff of Dawson’s Creek, and now it may actually be happening. Or maybe Berlanti is as sick of that dreck as we are and will use this as a way to make something good. I’m hoping for that.
On the positive, if we have to have more superhero movies Green Lantern and The Flash are just about the only two superheroes left who deserve them. The Flash is a household name, and while Green Lantern’s profile may have slipped a little in recent years there was a time when his popularity rivaled that of Batman or Superman. This isn’t some third-rate superhero who no one has heard of. This isn’t Elektra or Daredevil.
Green Lantern really has a lot of potential to bring something different to the superhero genre. His powers are unlike anything we’ve seen on screen before, and his abilities are driven in large part by his own creativity, rather than big muscles, kung fu, or some sort of invulnerability. Originally created in the 1940’s, there have been several iterations of the character. The original was Hal Jordan, an ordinary man in possession of a power ring which gives him the incredible power to manipulate and control the physical world, literally creating just about anything he can imagine. Rumor has it that it won’t be Jordan in JLA but rather a more recent Lantern named John Stewart, the first African American Green Lantern. Since this is a spinoff of JLA, it’s reasonable to assume that’s who we’ll be getting in the solo movie as well.
