Arrowverse producer Marc Guggenheim was recently part of the Storytelling Across Media conference, and while his time working on Arrow has obviously reached its end, he did drop some hints about what fans can expect from the Green Lantern TV show that's in the works for HBO Max.
The plan is for that to put the spotlight on characters like Alan Scott, Guy Gardner, Simon Baz, and Jessica Cruz, and it sounds like the streaming service is spending a lot of money on reinventing the franchise after 2011's disastrous movie. Guggenheim was one of the credited writers on that, but he's done a lot of great work in the DC Universe in the near decade that's followed.
Talking about what fans can expect from this iteration of Green Lantern, the producer shed some light on the approach that's being taken to telling the story of these Green Lantern Corps members.
"I happen to believe - and this is not a universally-held opinion - that you can't do a ten-hour show or an eight-episode show, like an 8-hour movie. I don't think that works. When I see it done, there's always some flabby episodes in the middle. I think you have to approach it like a TV series and approach each episode like its own entity. Even though it's streaming, even though hopefully people will binge it, you've got to make each episode a satisfying meal."
That sounds a lot like the approach the now defunct DC Universe streaming service took to shows like Stargirl and Swamp-Thing, and while elaborating on that point, Guggenheim pointed to Green Lantern being a big budget endeavour for HBO Max.
"You've got to look at it with a different tempo than you would have in a two-hour movie," he continued. "That being said, certainly the show for HBO Max that we're all working on, we are approaching it with the production ambitions of a movie. So we're writing it like a TV show but we're hoping to produce it like a film."
It's an exciting approach to the project, and one we can only hope ends up paying off in a big way.
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