Green Lantern has been cancelled and for good!
The Green Lantern film has arrived on Netflix, and its presence in the streaming service’s top ten lists may have piqued interest in the possibility of a sequel with Ryan Reynolds reprising the CGI mask.
When it was first announced that the live-action film will be released in 2011, it had a lot going for it. The film was scheduled to be directed by Martin Campbell, the filmmaker of GoldenEye and Casino Royale, with Ryan Reynolds as the titular role.
Unfortunately, an A-list ensemble that included Reynolds, Blake Lively, Mark Strong, Michael Clarke Duncan, Tim Robbins, Angela Bassett, and Peter Sarsgaard couldn’t save the film’s godawful pacing and storyline. As a result, the film garnered unfavourable reviews, and many people do not hold the DC film in high regard.
Despite this, there appears to be fresh interest in bringing the Green Lantern back to life. Although there is a tease of the character in Zack Snyder’s Justice League, the Lanterns are nowhere to be found in the DCEU as of writing this essay, and many would agree that this has to change.
What led to Cancellation?
Several circumstances contributed to the cancellation of Green Lantern 2, which starred Ryan Reynolds as DC’s Green Lantern in the 2011 film. Warner Bros. attempted an origin tale for Green Lantern/Hal Jordan before Ben Affleck’s Batman and Henry Cavill’s Superman rebooted the Justice League series.
The 2011 picture starred Ryan Reynolds as Hal Jordan and Blake Lively as his love interest Carol Ferris, a couple who would eventually become one of Hollywood’s most popular married couples.
Green Lantern was supposed to get a sequel, like with all franchise-starting material nowadays, to continue Hal Jordan’s story with Ryan Reynolds returning his part if the picture was well-received. Green Lantern was supposed to be the inaugural entry in a new DC film world, similar to how Iron Man kicked off Phase 1 of the MCU. Green Lantern’s end credits even hint at a never-made sequel in which Sinestro (Mark Strong) is corrupted by the dark power of the yellow ring of fear following its resurrection.
The superhero flick was nearly universally viewed as a flop in the superhero picture business. Despite grossing $219.9 million at the box office, the film underperformed its $200 million budget; according to The Hollywood Reporter, the movie would have needed to gross $500 million to be called a success.
The movie was also slammed by reviewers and audiences alike, receiving a mere 26% from critics and 45 percent from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes. It was widely panned despite its enormous budget, with many critics criticising to its misappropriation of comic book lore, poor narrative, and dependence on special effects and sound over depth.
Will there be no sequel to Green Lantern?
Warner Bros. scrapped the planned sequel after learning about seeing box office results and bad critical and fan reception. Screenwriter David S. Goyer claimed that Green Lantern’s presence in the DCEU would constitute a reboot, ditching Reynolds’ iteration, however Zack Snyder teased almost bringing Reynolds back as Green Lantern in 2017’s Justice League.
Another reason for the sequel’s cancellation was Reynolds’ lack of enthusiasm in reprising his part, despite his obvious dislike for the picture. Reynolds has already encouraged fans on Twitter not to see Green Lantern, despite having just watched it once in March 2021. Furthermore, in the end-credits scene in Deadpool 2, the character shoots Ryan Reynolds while he reads the Green Lantern script to prevent him from starring in the film.
Despite the fact that it was a box office flop, Ryan Reynolds’ Hal Jordan role demonstrated his ability to direct a superhero film, leading to his most well-known character to date: Deadpool. Reynolds may not have been able to escape the association of his DC superhero and later been recruited to play the well-received Wade Wilson if Green Lantern had gone forward with a sequel that would have likely yielded the same unsatisfactory result.
Reynolds’ instance is just another example of an actor’s transfer from DC to Marvel or vice versa working out well for them, such as Tom Hardy playing DC’s Bane before becoming Marvel’s Venom or Ben Affleck transitioning from Marvel’s Daredevil to the prominent role of the DCEU’s Batman.
Now that HBO Max is developing a TV series on it that will follow numerous human Green Lanterns, including Finn Wittrock’s Guy Gardner, the DCEU has a chance to redeem the character(s) after a decade of neglect.
Green Lantern has appeared in various DC films such as Zack Snyder’s Justice League, Stargirl, and through Easter eggs on Arrow, but the HBO Max series will be the first big-budget Warner Bros. project centred on the superhero since Reynolds’ Green Lantern (and his corps).
Final verdict
The chances of Green Lantern happening are nil, because everything DC will almost certainly find its major hub on HBO Max. Everything that wears the logo of Marvel’s largest opponent, from Wonder Woman 1984 to Titans, will very certainly end up inside their ranks, thus if Green Lantern 2 ever happens, it will most likely be on that streaming service rather than Netflix.
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