When HBO’s Lanterns premieres on the 2026 TV schedule, it will give the Green Lantern mythology another shot at impressing in live action following the failure of the 2011 Green Lantern movie. However, before this upcoming DC TV show came along, there was a much different kind of Green Lantern series that was in the works. Jeremy Irvine was one of just two actors who’d been announced for this series, and after reading about how he learned it was scrapped, I hope that he can still be included in the DC Universe franchise somehow.
With this earlier Green Lantern show taking place across decades, Irvine had been tapped to play Alan Scott, known in the comics as the Golden Age Green Lantern, in the early 1940s-set storyline, while Finn Wittrock would have portrayed Guy Gardner in the 1980s storyline. When The Direct inquired with the War Horse actor about this project never came to be, he answered:
I was so gutted. I think I slept on my floor that night when I found out that it wasn’t going to happen. In this industry, I always like to say that you get one kick in the nuts every year as an actor. And that, I remember, that one being a being a hard one because I had some really good ideas for it, I thought… But you know, there’ll be something else where we get to incorporate it. But it was just a really nice story; the way it was written was really cool. The scripts were great. And I hope one day it happens, and I hope whoever does it gets to have an amazing time.
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Jeremy Irvine didn’t provide any specific details about what we might have seen on this Green Lantern show, saying that he’d “probably signed more NDA’s for that than ever before” in his life and didn’t want to jeopardize potentially working with DC Studios co-head James Gunn. However, it had been previously reported that his version of Alan Scott was going to be a closeted FBI agent who becomes Earth’s first Green Lantern. Finn Wittrock’s Guy Gardner, meanwhile, would have been an “embodiment of 1980s hyper-patriotism.” Simon Baz, Jessica Cruz and Kilowog would have also appeared alongside a handful of new characters, and this series had more of a space opera vibe to it, whereas Lanterns is an Earth-set detective story.
It’s a shame playing Alan Scott in this Green Lantern series didn’t work out, but that doesn’t mean he can’t still have a future at DC. For one thing, the Hall of Justice mural from Superman shows that fellow Golden Age heroes like Sandman (the Wesley Dodds version), Liberty Belle and Wildcat existed in the DCU. If the Alan Scott of this universe is a more magical hero like he is in the comics, as opposed to being reimagined as a Green Lantern Corps member, then it would be easy enough to highlight him without there being any continuity issues with Lanterns. So hypothetically, Jeremy Irvine could still play Alan, and maybe, like he suggested, those older ideas could still be utilized.
But if that’s not an option, I hope Irvine will still be considered for a different role in the DCU, as there are plenty of characters to still go around. For now, Lanterns is expected to air sometime in mid-2026, between Supergirl and Clayface’s respective June and September releases on the 2026 movies calendar. Irvine can currently be seen in the new movie Turbulence and is also a series regular in Starz’s Outlander: Blood of My Blood.
