‘Green Lantern’ HBO Max Series Casts Jeremy Irvine As Gay Superhero Alan Scott
HBO Max has found its Alan Scott.Jeremy Irvine, who made his film debut in Steven Spielberg’sWar Horseand led theBourneTV spinoffTreadstone, is being eyed to play the LGBTQ superhero in theGreen Lanternseries on HBO Max, joining Finn Wittrock, who has already been cast as Guy Gardner.
TV Linereports that Jeremy Irvine is in talks to play Alan Scott, depicted in the HBO MaxGreen Lanternseries as a secretly gay FBI agent in the year 1941.GreenLantern, which hails fromArrow-verse maestro Greg Berlanti andArrow/Legends of Tomorrowco-creator Marc Guggenheim, will be a time-hopping adventure following a multitude of Green Lanterns, Alan Scott, Guy Gardner, and likely the most well-known member of the Green Lantern Corps., Hal Jordan.
But Irvine’s character, Alan Scott, actually predates Hal Jordan in DC Comics. Introduced as the original Green Lantern and a member of the Justice Society of America, Alan Scott was created in 1940 before being lost to the ether like many of his fellow Golden Age heroes. But eventually, Alan Scott was reintroduced in the 2000s as a Lantern from a parallel Earth, and more recently, re-conceived as gay, becoming one of the most high-profile gay characters in the DC Universe. TheGreen Lanternseries will be picking up on that later iteration of Alan Scott, depicting him as a closeted FBI agent-turned-superhero in the 1940s, which sounds ripe for compelling storytelling.
Irvine, who made his feature debut inWar Horseand has appeared in films likeMamma Mia! Here We Go Again(he was young Pierce Brosnan) andThe Last Full Measure,joins thealready-cast Wittrock(American Horror Story), who plays Guy Gardner, the inexplicably likable “hulking mass of masculinity, and, as rendered in the comics, an embodiment of 1980s hyper-patriotism.”
TheGreen Lanternseries “reinvents the classic DC property through a story spanning decades and galaxies, beginning on Earth in 1941 with the very first Green Lantern, secretly gay FBI agent Alan Scott, and 1984, with cocky alpha male Guy Gardner (Wittrock) and half-alien Bree Jarta. They’ll be joined by a multitude of other Lanterns — from comic book favorites to never-before-seen heroes.”
Greg Berlanti, Marc Guggenheim, andLEGO Batman Moviewriter Seth Grahame-Smith are writing the series and executive producing. Other executive producers include Geoff Johns, Sarah Schechter, David Madden, and David Katzenberg, with Elizabeth Hunter and Sara Saedi co-executive producingGreen Lantern.
