If you saw Jeremy Saulnier’s tense, excellent Rebel Ridge (pictured above), this bit of casting news will probably not surprise you: That movie’s star, Aaron Pierre, is your next Green Lantern. He will play John Stewart alongside the already-announced Kyle Chandler (playing Hal Jordan) in DC Studios’ Lanterns. Peter Safran, who runs DC Studios alongside James Gunn, has said that Lanterns “plays a really big role in leading into the main story we are telling across film and TV”—so Pierre may be quite busy in the coming years.
This is not Pierre’s first foray into superhero territory, or even into DC Comics-land: He played Dev-Em in Syfy’s Krypton. More recently, he was in The Underground Railroad; starred opposite Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal in Foe; and played Malcolm X in the Hulu series Genius: MLK/X. He also provides the voice of Mufasa in the upcoming live-action The Lion King.
As The Hollywood Reporter notes, “the role of Stewart carries much significance, as the fan-favorite comic book character was one of DC’s first Black superheroes.”
According to Entertainment Weekly, the show—which Gunn has compared to True Detective—follows Stewart and Jordan as “They head to the American heartland to investigate a murder and find themselves in the midst of a dark, Earth-based mystery that has larger implications for the over-arching DCU plans that will stretch across movies and shows.”
Lanterns has as showrunner Chris Mundy, whose presence may help them live up to the True Detective comparisons; Mundy was a producer and writer on True Detective: Night Country (and also Ozark). He will also be writing Lanterns alongside Damon Lindelof and DC Comics writer Tom King.
Lanterns was ordered straight-to-series at HBO, and is expected to have an eight-episode first season. There’s no word yet on when we might expect to watch it.
