Aaron Pierre reigned over San Diego Comic-Con Friday, as DC Studios and HBO unpacked the mystery box behind Lanterns.
Ample footage was revealed, including a new trailer (below), with highlights including a look at the archnemesis Sinestro (Ulrich Thomsen), as well as the reveal that the race known as Manhunters are the big threat of the series.
Pierre leads Lanterns as John Stewart, a young Green Lantern in training, while Kyle Chandler plays veteran Lantern Hal Jordan. From the clips shown, much of the drama is wrung from the tension between the two men, with Stewart angling to wear the powerful ring the space cops wield and Jordan not willing to accept that the man he is training is not his backup but rather his replacement.
Pierre — sporting a leather jacket that had the Green Lantern motto “Brightest Day/Blackest Night” emblazoned on it as well as green and white shoes with the letters JS on the back — worked up the crowd by talking his affinity for the character. “If I had the choice to choose any character in the DC Universe, I would still choose John Stewart,” said the actor. “I would chose John every time.”
He also recounted his fraught casting as he sustained a severe injury to his left arm, in which the tendon separted from the bone, and the “bicep went all the way to my shoulder,” he described. The 7,000-strong crowd collectively winced. The casting process was winnowing down to the final two or three actors — and he had to undergo surgery. With him unable to even extend his arm, his representation team asked him if he still wanted to finish auditioning, to which he responded, “Don’t ask silly questions.”
“I did my final call back in my brace,” he recalled. “I just wanted the role so much. I love John so much. In that moment, and this isn’t hyperbole, in that moment, I was like, ‘What would John do?’ So I walked in there and gave it my best and got the role.”
He had only months to recuperate before shooting began but “it felt so good to rehabilitate to be part of this family.”
During the panel, Lanterns guest star Nathan Fillion crashed the stage to perform a bit in which it seemed he had missed his invitation to the panel. (Fillion played the Green Lantern known as Guy Gardner in last summer’s Superman and will reprise the character in the show.)
Pierre, meanwhile, said that less than 20 percent of the show was shot on the Warner Bros. lot. The rest was filmed all over California. And the cast and crew became a family, like a traveling theatre company, with Pierre saying he was known for doing pushups with the transport crew. “You can feel the family, you can feel the unit…whatever happens, we poured our hearts into this,” he said.
The series is co-created by Chris Mundy, Damon Lindelof, and Tom King, and also stars Garret Dillahunt and Poorna Jagannathan, all of whom where on stage.
Per the logline, Lanterns follows “two intergalactic cops drawn into a dark, earth-based mystery with cosmic ties as they investigate a murder in the American heartland.”
The series bows Aug. 16 on HBO and also stars Kelly Macdonald, Laura Linney, Jason Ritter, Thomsen, Nathan Fillion (reprising his Superman role as Guy Gardner), J. Alphonse Nicholson and Jasmine Cephas Jones.
DC Studios most recently released the Emmys juggernaut The Penguin in 2024, as well as the Gunn-created Peacemaker season two last year.