Blake Lively Cast As Green Lantern’s Leading Lady
The search for an actor to play Green Lantern famouslycame down to a few big names:Ryan Reynolds, who got the job, as well asJustin TimberlakeandBradley Cooper. Trades are now saying that the hunt for a leading lady has been down to a few names as well, which is exactly as you’d expect it to be. There’s always a shortlist; no tentpole film gets made with a couple of names just picked out of the sky.
Current info says thatthe shortlistforGreen Lantern’s primary female character Carol Ferris — an aerospace company exec and the woman who hires test pilot Hal Jordan, who becomes Green Lantern — includedKeri Russell,Jennifer GarnerandBlake Lively. The gig has gone to Lively, and she’ll prep to shoot the film in March in Louisiana.
This is pretty surprising. Lively has done well onGossip Girl, but at 22 is rather young.THRsays that, as written, Lively’s role is more appropriate for an older actress, but that Lively impressed everyone with both her audition and work in Ben Affleck’s new filmThe Town, now in post-production.
Her character is described by the trade as a woman who “who runs her father’s aerospace company and hires cocky test pilot Hal Jordan (Reynolds), who later becomes the intergalactic policeman Green Lantern. In the comics, the romance became complicated when an alien race bestowed her the power of a crystal called the Star Sapphire.” Most female leads in films based on male comic book characters don’t get powers of their own, so Lively could have a more interesting job than most.
We don’t know her exact character trajectory in the film, however. The script byGreg Berlanti,Marc GuggenheimandMichael Greenhas been kept generally under wraps, though THR reports thatMichael Goldenbergis doing a rewrite now.
As the trade says the next big roles to cast are those of “the alien known as Sinestro” and Dr. Hector Hammond. Jackie Earle Haleyhas been rumoredfor Sinestro, who eventually becomes one of Green Lantern’s biggest antagonists. Hammondwas described in the film’s casting callas “austere and impersonal,” “real ‘scummy,'” and “a pathologist and also the son of a Senator.“With the shoot only ten weeks away, we’ll have names to attach to those characters soon.
