Greg Berlanti Updates Green Lantern & The Flash Projects

recently sat down with the Green Lantern producer and co-writer Greg Berlanti. He discusses his involvement in a few of DC Comics and Warner Brother’s projects and gives updates on the Green Lantern sequel as well as the treatment of the script for The Flash.

“We are working on the treatment for the second [Green Lantern] film actually, we just started working on that with the same guys who I did the original with. (Michael Green and Marc Guggenheim) Those two guys are also writing a script based on a treatment we wrote for ‘The Flash,’ so that’s my involvement with DC right now is the script for ‘The Flash’ and the treatment for ‘GL2′.”

On the tone of the films:

“‘GL’ is always a bit lighter than that on earth but mixed with a twinge of the space opera, which has its own epic qualities to it. ‘Flash’ as we’re getting into it is interesting, too. Though Barry Allen was a little lighter in the comic, I think because of the nature that he was a CSI and moved in this world of crime before this stuff happened. I think it’s tonally somewhere in between ‘GL’ and ‘Dark Knight.’ It’s actually a little bit darker than when we were working on (‘GL), because you’re dealing with somebody who is already a crimefighter in a world of those kinds of criminals and that kind of murder and homicide. I find you talk a lot about different films when you’re working on a film, and we spend a lot more time talking about ‘Se7en’ or ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ as we construct that part of Barry’s world, then I thought when we got into it. It helps balance a guy in a red suit who runs really fast.”

Concerning what elements of The Flash would make the conversion from the pages tot he film, Berlanti had this to say:

In ‘The Flash,’ there’s the sci-fi component and there’s the crime component and it’s fitting those two things together, and the sci-fi thing, we obviously want to nail that and honor that and do that in a way that feels visceral and real and cool and probably more in the tone of ‘The Matrix” films or things like that.

I am happy to hear that they are taking a bit of a darker approach to The Flash. It seems to be the “flavor of the month” to take films in a darker direction, but I think it will work well for this project, keeping it from becoming rather campy like it has potential to be. As for the Green Lantern sequel, I think it might be a bit early to be going forward at the pace they are with it. While I don’t doubt it will be successful, You’d think they’d want to make sure before you get too far into production.

The Martin Campbell directed Green Lantern opens next summer and stars Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively and Mark Strong.