Zack Snyder was first hired to direct Man of Steel in October 2010, eight months before Ryan Reynolds’ Green Lantern landed in theaters with a thud to go down as one of the biggest box office bombs in history, but there wasn’t much overlap between the two projects, despite Warner Bros. initially planning on an entire intergalactic franchise with Hal Jordan in the lead.
It wasn’t until Snyder’s Superman reboot was released that Warner Bros. firmed up their plans for an entire shared cinematic universe, long after Green Lantern had been consigned to the history books and evolved into a figure of fun. However, that didn’t stop constant rumors from making the rounds that Reynolds would somehow end up involved with Zack Snyder’s Justice League despite the two DC adaptations occupying completely different places in the live-action DC canon.
We heard that a deal was signed, sealed and delivered, only for conflicting stories to claim that the Deadpool star was actually too busy, book-ended by a succession of tales making the rounds that he was possibly, maybe, definitely set to make a cameo appearance in the Snyder Cut. The actor even took to social media when a major surprise guest was teased to deny in double quick time that it was going to be him.
Insider Daniel Richtman is now reporting that Reynolds’ Hal Jordan was indeed set to appear in the film at one point and would’ve lent an assist to Jon Stewart in the Snyder Cut, helping the Justice League battle against the forces of Darkseid.
“RR’s role in Snyder Cut was to come in with Jon Stewart and tell the League they would help them in the war against Darkseid.”
There’s no further information about how close or far this actually came to happening, or whether it was just one of many ideas being spitballed behind the scenes at various points, but what we do know for sure is that the actor only watched Green Lantern for the first time yesterday.