Warner Brothers have been puzzling over how to bring the Green Lantern to life for what seems like an age. It was way back in 1997 that fanboy extraordinaire Kevin Smith was first approached to write a script, only for the Clerks director to pass in favour of someone “better qualified.”

With the studio clearly flummoxed with what to do with the project, Green Lantern was shoved to the bottom of the pile, before the nightmarish concept of making it as a comedy reared its ugly head.

Saturday Night Live scribbler Robert Smigel got as far as turning in a script (with Jack Black pencilled in as the lead!), before Warner scrapped the idea in the face of poor feedback from outraged fans.

Then in October 2007, Greg Berlanti, a genuine fan of the series, signed on to write and direct, making the key decision to have smart-mouthed fighter-pilot Hal Jordan as the Lantern of choice, rather than original pick, John Stewart. There’s more than one Green Lantern you see, with various different characters taking on the mantle throughout the history of the comic.

“I was a huge comic-book fan growing up,” said Berlanti, “and so I actually went around LA for a while trying to get comic-book movies as a writer. So I didn’t have to do much research at all, it was more ‘how am I going to get into this one script all my enthusiasm about this film?’”