"Green Lantern" Writer on the Film

[J_UNTITLED]

From IGN...

Just as the news broke today that director Martin Campbell (Casino Royale) is in talks to take on the job of helming a Green Lantern live-action film, as luck would have it IGN was attending an unrelated press conference with Michael Green, who co-wrote the GL script. So we of course had to pull Green aside and hit him up with some power-ring questions!

"They just announced that they're in talks with a new director on it," Green told us during a break from promoting his new NBC series Kings. "From what I understand, they're edging towards making the movie. Warner Bros. doesn't do greenlights the way a lot of places do. They sort of always inch towards it, so there's never a day where they're like, 'Boom! Magic bomb! We're greenlit!' But we've had very good conversations with them. From what I'm told, they really like the last script we gave them and are hoping to find a way to make it, which would be thrilling."

Green (no relation to the Lantern), who has written everything from episodes of Heroes to the Superman/Batman comic, penned the script with Greg Berlanti, who was previously slotted to direct the film, and Marc Guggenheim (The Flash: The Fastest Man Alive. The writer cites the recent Warner Bros./DC "summit meeting" as part of the reason for the apparently renewed interest at the studio in the long gestating project.

"What emerged from that, from what I know as I was not a part of it, was that from that meeting a lot of enthusiasm for Green Lantern came about," says Green. "I think they liked it. I think DC liked it. I've heard very nice things from DC and I've heard nice things from DC writers. Actually, another really nice compliment -- Geoff Johns read it and I bumped into him and he was really nice and complimentary about it. I thought that was really cool because I like his comics."

Of course, the scribe is mum on most of the details of the storyline, but he does confirm that the most famous of the Lanterns will be at the center of the film.

"It's Hal Jordan," he confirms. "I can't give too many spoilers, but the idea is to introduce a new character to an audience that is probably not familiar with him. So we start at the beginning with Hal Jordan."

As for the inclusion of other GLs like John Stewart or Alan Scott, Green does not rule out the possibility that such characters might show up as well.

"We are steeped in the mythology enough that extrapolations both forward and backward in time are available," says Green, before responding to the question of whether or not the film will be "cosmic" with a simple and concise, "He's the Green Lantern."

And then there's always the Justice League issue when discussing any DC Comics film property. The team film that was being put together at Warner Bros. recently and rather famously blew up in director George Miller's face, Krypton style. But still, with Marvel's The Avengers clearly on the fast track, it seems inevitable that Warner is going to want to reassemble the JLA in the near future. And that will presumably involve the Green Lantern, though Green says there has been no mandate from the studio during the writing of GL to somehow set up or otherwise tie into a possible Justice League movie.

"I'm sure they've had those conversations [at the studio]," says Green. "I don't know what the current plans are for Justice League. I would go see it! It sounds cool. I think the idea is to treat them separately right now and, like all things, they eventually tie together in the mind of the viewer. The only mandate such as it is was, 'Any references you want to make to expand the DC world, we would enjoy,' which is one of the better notes you can get. … It's like, 'Oh, more candy? Please!' They opened up the DC toy box on that, so it was fun. It's definitely tied to the familiar DC universe. It's very much something to honor the people who love Green Lantern the way me and the other writers read it, faithfully and honoring everything that it is without any violations of the substance."