Last month it was announced that DC Entertainment’s former chief creative officer Geoff Johns has signed on as writer and producer on the planned DC Extended Universe release Green Lantern Corps, and now Johns has shared a few words on his plans for the movie, and how he hopes to differentiate it from Marvel Studios’ own hit cosmic franchise.
“I agree in both a similar way and a very different way, too, because you can’t be just ‘it’s DC’s Guardians of the Galaxy,'” said Johns when asked by Collider whether there will be any similarities between the two space-set franchises. “Because James Gunn did such a great job on that, but you got to look at it like… I think you look at everything – this is when I do comics, too – you look at everything that worked and didn’t work, on anything. Like revamping a character, reintroducing a character, I’ve done it a lot. The creative kind of viewpoint and way into the character and rebooting and changing it and reintroducing it, is informed by everything. It’s informed by comics and both what works and what doesn’t work. I don’t wanna spoil any of the story there, but if people liked my run on Green Lantern, then hopefully they’ll like what I’m doing.”
“I’m taking everything into account,” Johns continued when asked about his influences for the story. “That’s what you do. You are not starting from ground zero and going ‘I’m going to tell a story about this.’ It’s connected to everything, animation and comics and zeitgeist and other movies,” Johns said. “There is a lot to take in and then redirect, and I am trying to do what I did on the comics in a way, do a rebirth. What do you do to try and reintroduce a concept and a group of characters and make it – this applies to everything I work on – but as a writer, and that’s what I really wanted to get back to, is being the writer, when I do my comics I feel I have more control over the minutae, because the minutae it does matter. All those little choices add up to something good or something that doesn’t work. Part of the reason I want to get back into the writing of it all is because I want to form that minutia myself.”
Johns also spoke briefly about the Ryan Reynolds-headlined 2011 movie – specifically, the CGI costumes, stating that: “I look at what they did with those suits. Look, I have so many opinions that I won’t say. In my head, a tangible suit is cooler, an enhanced tangible suit is better. But it’s really going to be about where we are in the director and everything else, and that’s a question, we get a great script, and we get a great director, and they want to make the movie and then we’ll see.”
Green Lantern Corps was originally set for release in 2020, but it remains to be seen whether Warner Bros. is still aiming for that date.
