Popverse's top stories of the day

• Superman celebrates kindness and love in his DCU reboot, says writer/director James Gunn during CinemaCon 2025 presentation
• MEMBERS ONLY: Raina Telgemeier & Scott McCloud's The Cartoonist Club is for all the indoor kids (past and present)
• Spider-Man vs. Venom on the big screen? "We got close" to a Tom Holland/Tom Hardy movie, says Hardy

Since its announcement, DC Studios and HBO’s Lanterns — a television series reboot of the Green Lantern mythos as part of the new shared DC Universe — has been described as being a more grounded take on the concept, with DC Studios co-head James Gunn describing it as “True Detective-like” at one point. One of the people responsible for bringing the show to the screen has come up with some other comparisons that just make us even more impatient for the show to arrive, however.

Talking to Collider, director James Hawes — who’ll be directing the first two episodes of the show, co-created by Ozark’s Chris Mundy, Watchmen and Lost’s Damon Lindelof and comic book writer Tom King — offered a lot of details about how he’s approaching the series, including likening it to two previous shows he’s worked on.

"There is a very particular humor that they brought to this,” he teased. “It's very rooted in a way that I like to think we achieve with Slow Horses, that I achieve with things like my Black Mirror's, and yet there is a rich vein of humor running through it. So, again, it was about that tone. I'm such a huge fan of Damon [Lindelof] and Chris [Mundy] and the writing that they've done in the past."

The show “doesn’t lack its sci-fi magic, but it’s done in a world where you accept that these things just are,” he said, adding about core cast Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre — who play Hal Jordan and John Stewart, respectively — “I'm going to use slightly strange words, but the first word that came to mind was authenticity.’ The next word is ‘charm.’ These are two people you just want to hang out with. There's just no doubt. You want to hang with them. You want to go on that journey. Add to that Kelly Macdonald, who I've worked with before on Black Mirror. You get people who are just so classy and so busy inhabiting their roles, so you never doubt it. They're not on the outside — they’re deep in those skins.”

Lanterns is expected to debut on Max and HBO in early 2026.

Enjoy our guides to how to watch the recent DCEU, the Arrowverse, and James Gunn's upcoming DCU.