Did Geoff Johns Reveal How ‘Green Lantern Corps’ Will Start?

Earlier this week, we wondered what Geoff Johns‘s take on a Green Lantern Corps movie might be like, but the writer/producer, who stepped down as DC Entertainment‘s chief creative officer on Monday to focus on creating new content with his Mad Ghost Productions shingle, may have already teased the first shot of the movie.

If you read Johns’s comics work, it’s a familiar one.

“Thanks for all the crazy support today as I take on my dream gig!” Johns wrote to friends and fans on Facebook earlier this week. “I especially wanted to give a shout out to my colleagues and friends at DC — our shared passion burns bright!”

Then he added:

“I’ve waited a LIFETIME to write this…

“FADE IN:

“ON a GREEN RING soaring through space…”

It is an image that we have seen many times over the years in Johns’s writing, often preceded by a “Ring status: Green Lantern deceased. Scan for replacement sentient initiated.”

If this is indeed the first shot of the movie, it likely ties into the long-reported premise of a space buddy-cop movie, where a seasoned veteran (likely Hal Jordan) finds himself training a hotshot rookie (likely John Stewart). The ring would likely be careening through space in search of a replacement who will ultimately be the novice Green Lantern at the center of the film.

Johns will get essentially a clean slate as it pertains to Green Lantern. Yes, the 2011 movie is still fairly recent and a big enough embarrassment that it is regularly mocked (usually by its star) — but it predates the shared DC movie universe, and since Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel, the only sign of Green Lanterns was in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo in Justice League. That one was not even particularly recognizable, but a minor player named Yalan Gur.

Johns contributed some big ideas to the Green Lantern mythology, including the “emotional spectrum,” which built on the idea of the Green Lanterns’s emerald willpower-energy and built a rainbow of emotions around it, each of which had powers that operated a little different from the GLs. That seems another likely element to introduce in the films, since characters like Atrocitus and Nekron appear to be featured in the DC Films intro image that debuted ahead of Wonder Woman.

Justice League is now on home video. The DC Extended Universe continues with Aquaman on December 21st, Shazam! on April 5, 2019, Wonder Woman 2 on November 1, 2019, Cyborg in 2020, and Green Lantern Corps in 2020.