Marc Guggenheim has posted three more pieces of concept art from the Green Lantern series he developed for HBO Max with Greg Berlanti and Seth Grahame-Smith. The art ran in the October 5 edition of his LegalDispatch newsletter, in reply to a reader who asked to see more from the show.
The first piece is a wide shot of Green Lanterns in battle, painted for the opening sequence of the pilot. Guggenheim wrote that he can’t remember the artist’s name. The second is a costume design by Laura Jean Shannon for Bree Jarta, a half-human Lantern of Sector 2814 who was invented for the series. Guggenheim captioned it, “No, this isn’t Jo Mullein,” since the design resembles the lead of DC’s Far Sector. The third shows Finn Wittrock as Guy Gardner in a green and black suit with silver gauntlets, drawn by Gina DeDomenico from another Shannon design. Guggenheim said the costume was going to be adjusted to look more like Gardner’s Justice League International outfit.
Two Eras and the Manhunters
Alongside the art, Guggenheim said the original take was set in two time periods and used the Manhunters as its primary villains. His title pitch was Emerald Knights, a name he had already worked under as a writer on the 2011 animated film Green Lantern: Emerald Knights.
The two periods were laid out back when HBO Max was casting the show. Jeremy Irvine was set to play Alan Scott, a closeted FBI agent in 1941. Wittrock’s Gardner was placed in 1984 and partnered with Bree Jarta. HBO Max ordered 10 episodes in October 2020 with Grahame-Smith as showrunner, and the announced lineup also included Jessica Cruz, Simon Baz, Kilowog, and Sinestro. Hal Jordan, John Stewart, and Kyle Rayner were left out.
The Manhunters reached the screen anyway. Lanterns, the HBO series that eventually took this show’s place, used them as its villains this season.
Earlier Art From the Show
A DiscussingFilm post about the reveal passed 2.9 million views and called this the first concept art from the series. Guggenheim’s August 14 newsletter had already included Francois Audouy’s painting of the Central Power Battery on Oa. In September, creature designer Constantine Sekeris posted Kilowog and Tomar-Re designs from a show he said never happened. Cosmic Book News tied those to the same project, though Sekeris did not name it.
How the Show Fell Apart
In that August newsletter, Guggenheim described the notes his team kept getting from HBO. Could the show wait until the end of season one to visit Oa? Did it need aliens? Could it be a grounded procedural? He said nobody ever framed those notes as a budget problem. He summed up the request as “True Detective with power rings” and said his team wasn’t interested in writing that version. He added that he doesn’t hold it against HBO, since the network knew what it wanted to program.
Grahame-Smith left in October 2022. The Hollywood Reporter reported he had written a full season of eight scripts by then. The series was reworked around John Stewart, a change TheWrap’s sources said was decided before James Gunn and Peter Safran took over DC. That version was scrapped too. In early 2023, Gunn and Safran announced Lanterns, which Safran pitched as a mystery in the vein of True Detective starring Hal Jordan and John Stewart.
The Alan Scott Scene Guggenheim Still Thinks About
Guggenheim also described a scene from the season finale, which he co-wrote with Geoff Johns. The series gave every Lantern a Prime Construct, the first thing they create with the ring, drawn from the worst moment of their life. Alan Scott never trained on Oa, so he never made one. In the finale, an elderly Alan is cornered by the villain and finally produces his. It’s a train.
The villain laughs at him, because a train wreck is where Alan found the ring that gave him his powers. The episode then ends on a flashback to Alan’s boyfriend leaving Los Angeles, and Alan, on a train.
Guggenheim returns to Green Lantern on December 16 with a Sinestro short story in DC’s Tales of the Green Lantern Corps: Training Day, drawn by Sedat Oezgen.
Sources: LegalDispatch, LegalDispatch (August 14), The Hollywood Reporter, TheWrap, Dark Horizons, Cosmic Book News, Gizmodo, Bleeding Cool
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