Sunday, October 28, 2007

Green Lantern Solo Movie Gets A Director

For Warner Brothers, it’s all going according to plan. Over the weekend we told you about the WB’s plan to use the JLA movie as a launching pad for a whole host of new superhero solo movies. On Sunday we learned that they’d greenlit a Flash solo movie helmed by Wedding Crashers director David Dobkin, and now it’s Green Lantern’s turn.

Variety says Greg Berlanti has been hired to co-write and direct a live-action, Green Lantern solo movie. Berlanti’s only prior directing experience was a movie I’ve never heard of called The Broken Hearts Club in 2000. Since then, he’s been writing and producing angsty, second-rate television dramas for networks like the CW. Brothers and Sisters, Everwood, Jack and Bobby, and Dawson’s Creek all pop off his resume.

We’ve all joked about how the next step for Hollywood is to turn one of their superhero franchises into a knockoff of Dawson’s Creek, and now it may actually be happening. Or maybe Berlanti is as sick of that dreck as we are and will use this as a way to make something good. I’m hoping for that.

On the positive, if we have to have more superhero movies Green Lantern and The Flash are just about the only two superheroes left who deserve them. The Flash is a household name, and while Green Lantern’s profile may have slipped a little in recent years there was a time when his popularity rivaled that of Batman or Superman. This isn’t some third-rate superhero who no one has heard of. This isn’t Elektra or Daredevil.

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