In addition to our first look at Ryan Reynolds in costume,
Entertainment Weekly provided a heavy discussion with the star, leading lady Blake Lively, producer Donald De Line, Director Martin Campbell, bad guy Peter Sarsgaard, and the shelved "comedic" take star Jack Black. This discussion was directly from the "Green Lantern" set, in New Orleans. And thanks to
CBM contributor
"Claybo4131", who received the
EW issue and provided the full transcript word for word below.
On a muggy May night, Ryan Reynolds sits on the New Orleans set of "Green Lantern" and ponders all that he's endured to play the superhero of the title, a power-ring-slinging intergalactic do-gooder named Hal Jordan.
He's been propelled at 60 feet a second on a wire to create the illusion he can fly. ("The first time you do it, you're deeply considering an adult diaper.") He's spent countless hours training for elaborately choreographed fight scenes, and maintained a monk-like diet-practically torturous in a city famed for its food. "Its all part of the job, so I guess I can't complain," he says with a shrug. "You spend one day a week eating what you want and the other 6 days eating drywall and wood chips."
The first installment in a planned GREEN LANTERN trilogy, this big-budget origin story, due June 17, 2011, aims to change that. "Green Lantern doesn't enjoy the familiarity or renown of, say, BATMAN or SPIDER-MAN," producer Donald De Line acknowledges. "we have to make the movie stand on its own."
"GREEN LANTERN is DC's STAR WARS," says DC Entertainment CCO Geoff Johns, who penned several acclaimed Green Lantern comics and co-produced the film. "It's an epic story." Figuring out the right way to bring the story to the screen wasn't simple. In 2004, reports surfaces that a zany comedic take on Green Lantern was in the works, with Jack Black in talks to wear the power ring. The notion made most fanboys go green around the gills, and the project quickly died. "I was going to be catching bad guys with giant green prophylactics," Black said in a recent interview. "I don't know, maybe they didn't want to go that way with the character."
With the comedy approach shelved, De Line took up the Green Lantern mantle and set out a film truer to the spirit of the comics. Greg Beltrani, a comic-book fan and TV producer (Brothers & Sisters), wrote a screenplay and pitched Warner Bros. an outline for a grand trilogy. "I had to convince them it was the most valuable property they hadn't tapped into and that it wasn't just a cartoony thing about a guy with a magic ring," says Beltrani, who is also a producer on the film. "Of all the comic-book movies, there hadn't been something with an Americana feeling on earth and an epic feeling in space." For his part, Campbell was drawn to the challenge of directing his first super-hero movie. "It was literally just that," he says. "I hadn't done one before and I thought, Why Not?"
Reynolds got hooked by the notion of Jordan's power ring can conjure anything he dreams up. "Imagination and will are his superpowers," Reynolds says. "We need a circus of Timothy Learys to think of the things Hal would invent with his ring." The actor already had experience in the superhero realm, having played the acerbic Deadpool in X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE and flirted with playing The Flash. Though a Deadpool spin-off is in development, Reynolds foresees no problem juggling two superhero characters-even ones from rivals Marvel and DC. "Green Lantern is a totally different bag of tricks," he says. "I wouldn't think twice about playing a cop in one movie and an FBI agent in another one." With Reynolds' wife, Scarlett Johansson, playing Black Widow in the IRON MAN franchise, he says "We have a lot of comic books lying around the house-more than the average young married couple."
Of course, any superhero movie worth its salt needs a good baddie. In counter-intuitive piece of casting, Peter Sarsgaard, best known for his work in the art-house films like KINSEY and AN EDUCATION, was brought in to play Hector Hammond, a xenobiology professor who is infected by an evil alien presence, giving him powers of telepathy and telekinesis and causing his head to grow abnormally large. "In generic terms, I never would want to play a bad guy in a comic-book movie, but strangely, I'm attracted to this guy," says Sarsgaard. "I assume they called me cause I have a very large head. I wear a size 61 hat sometimes. It was either me or Phillip Seymour Hoffman."
Rounding out the leads, GOSSIP GIRL star Blake Lively plays Carol Ferris, a hard-charging aerospace executive and romantic interest for Jordan who, in the comics, eventually becomes the supervillian Star Sapphire. "So often in a superhero movie, the woman is the prize or the damsel in distress," says Lively. "But Carol is so strong: She's the boss of the company Hal works at, she's a fighter pilot herself, she saves Hal a few times. That push and pull creates an interesting tension."
As Reynolds waits to shoot his next scene, which sets up an action sequence in which Green Lantern saves a crowd of partygoers from a plummeting helicopter, he reflects on the burden of carrying a superhero movie on his shoulders: "The pressure is all on me. I try not to think about that." He muses about the merchandising blitz that this summer tentpole movie will eventually unleash, a bonanza of green-hued products, each with his face plastered on it. "They'll be the Green Lantern hubcaps," he says drily. "The Green Lantern terry-cloth onesie. The Green Lantern prostate check."
For his part, there's just one souvenir he wants when it's all over. "I'm definitely leaving with a ring." He says. He pauses,'And maybe and ulcer."