Sebastian Stan Nearly Landed Green Lantern Before Reynolds

Fifteen years back, Sebastian Stan found himself in the thick of auditions for a major DC role, long before whispers began about him possibly joining the next Batman flick as Harvey Dent. On the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Stan recalled the day he walked into the casting room, only to spot a line-up of big names. “I remember getting there, and it was like, me, Justin Timberlake, Jared Leto, Ryan Reynolds, and maybe one other person. And I'm looking at these guys, going, 'I'm f*****. There's no way this is happening for me.' Looking back, I'm almost glad it didn't because I don't know if I could have handled that level of attention like some of those guys.”

In the end, it was Ryan Reynolds who scored the gig as Hal Jordan, the first human inducted into the Green Lantern Corps. The cast was stacked: Blake Lively played Carol Ferris, Mark Strong took on Thaal Sinestro, Peter Sarsgaard was Hector Hammond, and Angela Bassett, Tim Robbins, Geoffrey Rush, Taika Waititi, Michael Clarke Duncan, and Clancy Brown all had their moments. Despite the star power, the film copped a measly 25% on Rotten Tomatoes and quickly became a punchline among superhero fans. The experience left Reynolds so burnt that when DC Studios’ James Gunn later approached him about returning to the role, he reportedly told him to “get the f*** out of here!”

Behind the Scenes: A Director Out of His Depth

Martin Campbell, who helmed the project, reflected on the whole saga while promoting his film Cleaner last year. He admitted that his lack of enthusiasm for comic book stories might have been a problem from the start.

“I'd never done one before. I think quite honestly, if you're going to do a superhero movie, you have to be in that world a little bit, you know what I mean? You have to be excited by it. You have to have a background where you are part of that world, and you've been involved in that thing. And I wasn't. I also felt that Parallax, our bad guy, was just a cloud with a face on it — literally, that's all it was.”

Campbell’s comments suggest he was never really invested in the genre, and that might have shown in the final product. The villain, Parallax, ended up as a forgettable CGI cloud, which didn’t help the film’s reputation with punters or critics.

Reynolds Reflects on a Rough Ride

Reynolds hasn’t shied away from talking about the film’s failings. At a Wall Street Journal CMO Council Summit, he opened up about feeling powerless on set, unable to speak up about creative choices he disagreed with.

“You know, that was a time in my life when I was 'Yes, sir, no, sir. How high can I jump, sir?' You sit there, and you go, 'I have really strong thoughts and opinions on a creative matter,' and someone else on another movie, I remember, made a creative decision, and 'I thought, well, that's a nail in a coffin that I alone will lie in.'

He added,

“They don't say, 'This producer's movie flopped,' or 'This director's [movie flopped].' That's me. So if I'm going to be on that headline, I'd like to be the architect of my own demise — or success.”

For Stan, missing out on the role might have been a blessing in disguise. For Reynolds, it was a lesson in taking charge of his own career, even if it meant copping the blame when things went pear-shaped.