The director of Green Lantern has blamed the film’s failure on his alternate ending being “scrapped” due to budget constraints.
The 2011 movie starred Ryan Reynolds as Hal Jordan, a test pilot who is chosen to be the first human member of the intergalactic police force Green Lantern Corps. Blake Lively, Peter Sarsgaard, Mark Strong, Angela Bassett and Tim Robbins also starred.
The film struggled on release, grossing only $237million (£187million) against a budget of $200million (£158million), with its failure causing Warner Bros. to abandon plans to use it as a launching pad for their DC Extended Universe. In the end, 2013’s Man Of Steel served as the official start of the universe.
It was directed by Martin Campbell, best known for his work on the James Bond films GoldenEye (1995) and Casino Royale (2006). He has given an interview with Variety in which he spoke about the difficult experience of releasing Green Lantern, revealing that he believes the alternate ending he had in mind might have helped the film’s performance.
“While all the characters were part of the story…part of the comics basically, I think the story was left wanting.” he said. “I had a totally different ending to the movie, or the last third of it, all of which was scrapped in the interest of budget.”
He went on to make clear, however, that he takes responsibility for the film’s rough ride at the box office. “Listen, I’m not making any excuses,” he added. “When you direct and people don’t like it, you suck it up and you say, ‘Well, I’m the director, so that’s my fault’. I mean, the point was that I made that film simply because I hadn’t done a superhero movie before and the film failed, as simple as that.”
“It didn’t do business, I think, for a number of reasons, but the reason I did it was simply I’d never done one before,” he said. “I think quite honestly, if you’re going to do a superhero movie, you have to be in that world a little bit, you know what I mean? You have to be excited by it. You have to have a background where you are part of that world and you’ve been involved in that thing. And I wasn’t.”
It follows on from comments Campbell made in 2021, when he said “the film did not work”, and that he was “partly responsible for that – I shouldn’t have done it”.
Elsewhere, HBO has picked up a new Green Lantern series – Lanterns will star Kyle Chandler, Aaron Pierre and Kelly Macdonald and will be produced by DC Studios and Warner Bros. Television. It does not currently have a confirmed release date.
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