HBO’s Green Lanterns series puts a ring on it: Kyle Chandler joins as Hal Jordan

HBO’s Green Lanterns series found its first inductee to the Lantern Corps. after Josh Brolin passed on an offer.

Kyle Chandler of Friday Night Lights and Bloodline closed a deal to play Hal Jordan, one of two lead roles for the coming superhero drama, Entertainment Weekly has learned. Brolin was previously in talks for the job, but as EW reported previously, he ultimately turned it down.

Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, and Deadline were the first to report Chandler’s casting. Reps for HBO declined to comment. A rep for DC Studios did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In DC comics, Hal Jordan was a test pilot that became the first human member of the Green Lantern Corps., an intergalactic organization of beings that safeguard the cosmos. Armed with powerful rings that are fueled by willpower, Lanterns can create virtually anything they can imagine into physical constructs, from force fields to power blasts to armor to weapons and more.

In the context of the HBO show, Hal is a legend among the Corps., while John Stewart, another noted Lantern from the comics, is the new recruit. The story is essentially a cop drama with two Green Lanterns policing Precinct Earth who 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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The eight-episode Lanterns will be part of James Gunn and Peter Safran’s connected DC universe, and the mystery at its center plays into the larger arc for the DCU’s first phase, which is titled Gods and Monsters. “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,” Gunn said in a video presentation announcing Lanterns.

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 Chandler’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.