Warner Bros
Nathan Fillion has assumed a rare space in fandom, a place occupied by very few performers. Like Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, and Bruce Campbell before him, he's a geek favorite because he can play a certain kind of stock character with cocksure élan. He first made his mark on television as the jukebox repairman Johnny Donnelly in "Two Guys and a Girl," and captured the hearts of fandom as Malcolm "Mal" Reynolds, the quippy captain of the Serenity, in Joss Whedon's short-lived sci-fi series "Firefly." Fillion's television profile gradually rose over the 2010s as his portrayal of thriller novelist Frank Castle on ABC's "Castle," opposite Stana Katic as Detective Kate Beckett, became a top-20 Nielsen ratings hit. He was so indelibly likable in these varied roles that comic book readers began fan-casting him as any hero with a rakish charm.
For this reason, a sizable contingent of fans got hooked on the notion of Fillion as Hal Jordan, an Earth-born member of the Green Lantern Corps, before the casting of the 2011 Warner Bros. film. They aggressively lobbied the studio and DC to cast him as the iconic hero, and while the part obviously went to Ryan Reynolds, Fillion did not go home empty-handed. No, No, this isn't about Fillion getting cast as a bowl-cut-sporting Guy Gardner in James Gunn's forthcoming "Superman." Over a decade before landing this spot-on gig, Fillion donned the ring in a different medium.
Nathan Fillion's been there, done that as Hal Jordan
Warner Bros
Because the movie business is very much a business, and the 2011 "Green Lantern" movie cost Warner Bros. a jaw-dropping $200 million to make, the studio opted for a younger, hipper star than Fillion to play the title character. In retrospect, given that "Green Lantern" bombed, this worked out well for Fillion. Had he hitched his star to that film, he might've become an industry joke. This was before "Castle" caught on in a big way, so casting the lead of a failed television series and equally unpopular film spinoff as the star of a mega-budget superhero movie would've made Fillion look like something of an entertainment bad luck charm going forward.
Instead, DC found Fillion a comfortable, low-key home as the voice of Hal Jordan in the animated, direct-to-video features "Green Lantern: Emerald Knights" and "Justice League: Doom." Both movies were well-liked by the fan base and by critics (the former is rated 80% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, while the latter boasts a perfect 100% score), and Fillion had a fine time doing them. As he told Slice of Sci-Fi in 2012:
"This kind of work, it makes me happy. Makes me smile. When I'm doing these voiceovers, I kind of like to live in the moment. You suspend reality for just a second. You know what Green Lantern looks like, you know the situations, you know the characters that surround him. So I kind of just like to live in that moment for half-a-second like I'm there ... and it makes me [smile]."
Fillion is already making comic book fans smile, if not guffaw, with his brief, casually destructive cameo in the first trailer for James Gunn's expansive-looking "Superman," which is just one more reason to be amped for the film's July 11, 2025 release. Is it too much to ask that Fillion's Gardner get his own movie? WB might be cool to the idea given the bad juju drummed up by the 2011 film (which lost in the neighborhood of $120 million for the studio), but there are probably a million comic book nerds who can get them thinking otherwise. If Gunn's film rights the wrongs of the Man of Steel franchise after failed revivals from directors Bryan Singer and Zack Snyder, Guy Gardner could very well get his day.
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