Jeremy Irvine ‘in talks’ to play gay superhero in HBO Max’s Green Lantern reboot
British actor Jeremy Irvine attends ‘GQ Men Of The Year’ awards at Westin Palace Hotel on 21 November 2019 in Madrid, Spain. (Photo by Pablo Cuadra/Getty Images)
HBO Max’s upcoming Green Lantern reboot is reportedly eyeing Jeremy Irvine to play the gay superhero.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Irvine is in talks to play the lead role of Alan Scott, the original Green Lantern. Irvine made his film debut in the 2011 film War Horse and starred as J Randolph Bentley in the 2019 series Treadstone, which is connected to and based on the Bourne franchise.
He would join American Horror Story and Ratched star Finn Wittrock on the new HBO Max series. It was announced that Wittrock would play the lead role of Guy Gardner. The character is described as “a hulking mass of masculinity, and, as rendered in the comics, an embodiment of 1980s hyper-patriotism” in the series that is set to span decades.
The upcoming superhero series from gay producer Greg Berlanti will depict numerous Green Lanterns from across the DC universe. In the comics, the Green Lantern mantle is shared by several superheroes, many of which are members of interstellar law enforcement agency Green Lantern Corps.
Irvine’s potential role would be as Alan Scott, the first superhero from Earth to bear the Green Lantern. In the latest reboot, Scott was reimagined as a gay man, and the loss of his boyfriend was one of the reasons behind his transformation into the superhero.
Scott acknowledged in the comic that he “kept part of myself hidden from my friends and peers” before opening up about his sexuality. He even said that he had a “good deal” of “friends over the years”.
Irvine has faced criticism in the past over his role in Roland Emmerich’s 2015 film Stonewall, which was about the landmark riots in New York City in 1969. The film was accused of whitewashing and erasing the presence of the trans community in the historical LGBT+ movement.
However, Irvine claimed the movie “represents almost every race and section of society that was so fundamental to one of the most important civil rights movement in living history”.
The HBO Max has ordered 10 one-hour long episodes of the upcoming Green Lantern series. The series is co-written and executive produced by Berlanti, Seth Grahame-Smith and Marc Guggenheim. Grahame-Smith will also serve as showrunner on the Green Lantern series.
Alan Scott was created in 1940 by Martin Nodell, but he was later reinvented as Hal Jordan in 1959. Hal Jordan was later portrayed by Ryan Reynolds in the 2011 superhero film.
