Josh Brolin passes on HBO's Green Lantern series role

There's a ring of truth to at least one report going around about HBO's Green Lantern series: Josh Brolin was indeed offered a leading part, but he has since passed on the opportunity, EW has learned.

Multiple reports circulated in the past week that Brolin was offered the role of Hal Jordan, one of two lead characters in the drama, titled Lanterns. The Hollywood Reporter was the first to report on Brolin turning down the offer. EW reached out to reps for HBO, DC Studios, and Brolin for comment.

Lanterns, which is part of the fabric of James Gunn and Peter Safran’s connected DC universe of movies and shows, will follow the characters of Hal Jordan and John Stewart. As described in the comics, Hal was a test pilot who became the first human member of the Green Lantern Corps., an intergalactic organization of beings that safeguard the cosmos, armed with powerful rings. More simply, they’re space cops! Hal was a Lantern assigned to protect planet Earth.

John, meanwhile, is a former architect and U.S. Marine Corps vet. The character became another famous and fan-favorite Lantern who gained even more popularity over the years by featuring in the animated Justice League and Justice League: Unlimited cartoons.

The HBO series consists of eight episodes and envisions John as a new recruit to the Lantern Corps., while Hal is considered a legend among their ranks. The story is essentially a police drama with superheroes: They are “drawn into a dark, earth-based mystery as they investigate a murder in the American heartland,” according to the official logline. 

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When Gunn first announced Lanterns in January 2023 for Gods and Monsters, the title for the first phase of DC’s planned slate of superhero movies and shows, he likened the drama to True Detective. “We have a few other Lanterns peppered in there, but this is really a terrestrial-based TV show that is almost like True Detective with a couple of Green Lanterns who are space cops watching over precinct Earth,” he said in a video presentation. He noted that the mystery of the story plays into the larger arc for the DCU.

Chris Mundy of HBO’s True Detective: Night Country serves as showrunner and executive producer, while Damon Lindelof of HBO’s Watchmen and prolific DC comic creator Tom King co-write Lanterns with Mundy. Lindelof and King are also executive producers.

“John Stewart and Hal Jordan are two of DC’s most compelling characters, and Lanterns brings them to life in an original detective story that is a foundational part of the unified DCU we’re launching next summer with Superman,” Gunn and Safran previously said in a joint statement. 

Gods and Monsters begins this year with the animated Creature Commandos series in December. Prior to Brolin’s Hal, audiences will meet a different Lantern. Nathan Fillion plays Guy Gardner, another human Lantern from planet Earth, in next year’s Superman, directed and written by Gunn for release in theaters July 11, 2025.