However, due to the film's critical and commercial disappointment, Warner Bros. scrapped plans for a sequel, opting instead to use Man of Steel (2013) as the official start of the DC Extended Universe, two years after Green Lantern's release.

In the present day, Parallax escapes from his prison after becoming strengthened by an encounter with crash survivors who had accidentally fallen into the dugout where he was imprisoned on an abandoned planet.

Parallax feeds on their fear to gain strength before pursuing and mortally wounding Abin Sur, who escapes and crash-lands on Earth commanding his power ring to find a worthy successor.

On Earth Hal Jordan, a cocky test pilot working at Ferris Aircraft, is chosen by the ring and transported to the crash site.

Hal, disheartened by his extreme training sessions and Sinestro's doubts, quits and returns to Earth, keeping the power ring and lantern.

[36][37] In early 1997, Warner Bros. approached cult filmmaker and comic book writer Kevin Smith, who had then just finished writing Superman Lives, to script a Green Lantern film.

[42] Actor-writer Corey Reynolds, a comic book fan of the John Stewart character, pitched to Warner an idea for a trilogy, with him starring and performing screenwriting duties.

[43][44] He finished the script for Green Lantern: Birth of a Hero in June 2007, receiving positive feedback from Warner Bros. Reynolds hoped for a potential 2010 release date.

In October the same year, Greg Berlanti signed to direct the film and cowrite it with comic book writers Michael Green and Marc Guggenheim.

[45] A draft of the trio's 2008 script, leaked on the Internet, revealed a story that included the hero's origin and included the characters Carol Ferris, Kilowog, Sinestro, and Guy Gardner in a cameo appearance, and appeared "to set up Hector Hammond as Hal Jordan's ... first major nemesis...."[46] Shortly afterward, Guggenheim said that the script would contain characterizations inspired by the Denny O'Neil-Neal Adams run on the comic in the 1970s, and Dave Gibbons' work in the early 1980s.

[51] Bradley Cooper,[52] Ryan Reynolds,[52] Justin Timberlake,[52] and Jared Leto[7] were the producers' top choices for the starring role in July 2009.

[28] With a production budget of $200 million,[54] [55] Green Lantern was initially scheduled to begin filming in November 2009 at Fox Studios Australia.

[56] The start date was pushed back to January 2010,[7] but the production moved to Louisiana, where, on March 3, test footage was filmed in Madisonville involving stunt cars.

[58] Nine days after filming began, Angela Bassett joined the cast as Dr. Amanda Waller, a government agent who is a staple of the DC Comics universe.

[36] Against Campbell's wishes, the film's production head decided to have the sequence of Martin's death in an air crash intercut with Hal plunging in the plane and witnessing the flashbacks coming to him.

Comparing to how he saw all James Bond films before directing Casino Royale, Campbell acknowledged that superhero movies were never his "cup of tea".

[69] The Green Lantern score was composed by James Newton Howard,[70] who also worked on the other DC Comics-based films Batman Begins and The Dark Knight with Hans Zimmer.

[75] The first full theatrical trailer for the film was shown before screenings of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1[76] and became available online in November.

Sue Kroll, the studio's worldwide marketing president responded: "Part of the reason the response to the first trailer was lukewarm was that the big-scale sequences weren't ready to show, and we suffered for it.

[83] Six Flags debuted two roller coasters named Green Lantern at Great Adventure and Magic Mountain in 2011 to coincide with the film's release.

The site's critical consensus reads: "Noisy, overproduced, and thinly written, Green Lantern squanders an impressive budget and decades of comics mythology".

[99][100] Justin Chang of Variety gave Green Lantern a mixed review, stating that "Martin Campbell's visually lavish sci-fi adventure is a highly unstable alloy of the serious, the goofy and the downright derivative".

[101] Manohla Dargis of the New York Times was generally negative to the film, despite having some praise for Ryan Reynolds, Peter Sarsgaard, Mark Strong, and Angela Bassett.

[105] Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter gave it a positive review, saying the film "serves up all the requisite elements with enough self-deprecating humor to suggest it doesn't take itself too seriously".

[106] Reviewer Leonard Maltin felt that "the film offers a dazzling array of visual effects, a likable hero, a beautiful leading lady, a colorful villain, and a good backstory.

[107] Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times wrote: "More science-fiction space opera than superhero epic, it works in fits and starts as its disparate parts go in and out of effectiveness, but the professionalism of the production make it watchable in a comic book kind of way".

The series was to focus on the Guy Gardner, Jessica Cruz, Simon Baz, and Alan Scott versions of Green Lantern alongside Sinestro and Kilowog.

[128] The version with Berlanti was confirmed to have been cancelled, with this new series focusing on Hal Jordan and John Stewart as part of DC Studios' new shared universe.

[129] In December 2022, DC Studios CEO James Gunn confirmed that the Green Lantern characters would be an important part of the new DCU.

[138] In a promotional video for Free Guy in 2019, Reynolds and Waititi, who costarred in both movies, jokingly denied that they had ever heard of Green Lantern.