Wait, did HBO Max's upcoming, live-action Green Lantern series just find its newest star in actor Jeremy Irvine?
According to a report from Deadline, the Stonewall, War Horse, and Treadstone alum is currently in talks to portray out, gay character Alan Scott (the original man behind the Green Lantern mantle) in the highly-anticipated TV series based on one of DC Comics' most iconic, well-known heroes. American Horror Story star Finn Wittrock is already attached to the show as "cocky alpha male Guy Gardner."
While not much else is know about the series at the moment, we do know that Alan Scott did make headlines earlier this year when he had a very emotional, touching coming-out moment with his two children in DC's recent Infinite Frontier #0 comic! The first man who originally held the Green Lantern moniker when the character was first introduced to the world back in 1940 by creator Martin Nodell, Alan has also had his queerness explored in past DC titles (he had a boyfriend and was openly gay in the Earth 2 series back in 2012), so the idea of getting to see a live-action iteration of him soon is an exciting one, and will surely be a watershed moment in the continued fight for more LGBTQ+ representation in the big-budget, superhero genre.
HBO Max's live-action Green Lantern series was first announced back in October 2020 when TV producer and Arrowverse mastermind Greg Berlanti was tapped to develop the project to make it inclusive (and gay!) AF!
Deadline reported that the show, like the comics, will be incredibly diverse, featuring many different characters from all over the universe who take on the Green Lantern mantle, including Alan Scott, Simon Baz (the first Muslim-American member of the Green Lantern Corps.), and Jessica Cruz (a Latinx-American member of the Green Lantern Corps. who made her first appearance in Justice League #31 back in 2014).
"Both of these original DC properties we’ll be creating for HBO Max will be unlike anything seen on television," Berlanti said in a statement reported by Entertainment Weekly in 2019 when talks about a live-action Green Lantern series (and an anthology series entitled Strange Adventures) first got underway. "An anthology series of cautionary tales set in a world where superpowers exist, and, in what promises to be our biggest DC show ever made, we will be going to space with a Green Lantern television series, but I can’t reveal any more about that just yet."
