While attending the Creature Commandos panel Saturday at the New York Comic-Con, among the DCU updates given by James Gunn included the Lanterns TV series set to star Kyle Chandler as Green Lantern Hal Jordan and Aaron Pierre as John Stewart.
The series is described as similar to True Detective and follows Hal Jordan, a legend amongst the space police force known as the Green Lanterns, as he reluctantly mentors a younger Green Lantern, John Stewart. The two intergalactic cops get drawn into a dark, Earth-based mystery as they investigate a murder in the American heartland.
“Aaron Pierre is somebody I’ve wanted to work with for a long time. People don’t know, but he was almost Adam Warlock. He’s an amazing actor, and I’ve just really admired him from the beginning of his career,” said Gunn. “When it got down to it, he was just so fantastic. Seeing him read with Kyle was sort of one of those miraculous moments where you go, ‘Oh my God I don’t care what they’re saying I just love everything they’re saying together.'”
Developing Lanterns includes Chris Mundy who is the showrunner, with Damon Lindelof and DC Comics writer Tom King as writers and producers. James Hawes is also said to be directing the first episodes.
“Chris, Damon, and Tom have put this thing together. It’s another project that’s been blessed from the beginning,” explained Gunn. “It’s something when we first started the DCU, in the first couple weeks of heading this up, we got together with a group of of writers, and Tom King was one of those writers.
Gunn continued, “And we were in this room, and we came up with sort of this concept for Lanterns, and then we got Chris and Damon involved, and it just kind of has come out very easily, very naturally, it’s a much more — it’s a very grounded series, a very real series which is strange to say in a Green Lantern show but it’s going to be something like nobody’s ever seen before, and I can’t wait for people to catch it on HBO when it comes out.”
