It seems the many rumors regarding The Rock being in discussions to play John Stewart were true. However, that doesn’t mean those discussions worked out to where The Rock will be playing that character. The professional wrestler turned actor sat down with IGN to shine a bit of light on the whole issue surrounding himself and the Emerald Crusader:

IGN: Right, the John Stewart hashtag. What’s up with that? What’s going on there with the whole namedropping John Stewart thing? I’m curious.

Johnson: I love John Stewart!

IGN: So let’s address the green elephant in the room. Are you going to be Green Lantern?

Johnson: [Laughs] Okay, well since you asked. We’re all friends. So, you know, there’s been mutual interest with myself and DC for many years to find the right character. I, like everyone here in the room, love superheroes. So there’s been mutual interest with us for years, and we’ve been having ongoing discussions, myself and DC, for years about the right character, what the right character would be. That’s another thing, too: it had to be right.

IGN: It was going to be Black Adam for awhile, right?

Johnson: Well, here’s the thing — so we’ve been having these ongoing discussions. I won’t tell you who it is, but I’ll tell you the three qualities we’re looking for, okay? This is going to be fun!

IGN: Does he wear a ring?

Johnson: [Laughs] Can’t say that, but here we go. Here are three qualities. The first quality we were looking for was that he had to be extremely complex and have a lot going on. What that does for me as an actor and the studio is it gives us space that we can explore; his complexities. The other quality was that he had to — the character we were looking for had to be well-known but never brought to life. Then what that does again as an actor, it gives me a little bit of space, and we talked about personality. It just gives me a chance to put an imprint into his personality, with the set of tools that I could bring to the table and put a very unique twist on his personality, but still pay homage to who he is. The third thing — and most important — is he had to be a badass motherfucker, okay, and on a Superman level of power, where could throw down. In those three qualities, I’m happy we’ve found that character. Right now, we’re out to a lot of writers.

As you can see, The Rock is still being coy, but a tweet he made earlier (mentioned in this update), leads me to believe he may not want to play Green Lantern because Ryan Reynolds has already portrayed Green Lantern (albeit Hal Jordan) in the 2011 Green Lantern film.

As IGN mentioned, other characters that have been associated with The Rock’s name over the years are the Shazam! villain, Black Adam, and Lobo. Neither have been played in live action, but I’m not sure if they qualify as “well-known.”

If The Rock is out of the picture to play John Stewart, we can only hope there are still plans for a live action portrayal of the character. Let’s not forget that Idris Elba expressed interest in playing the role, and there were rumors of Denzel Washington putting on the green ring. I’m not saying either of those things would happen, but there definitely seems to be behind the scenes rumblings involving the John Stewart character, so perhaps DC and WB are still on the hunt for an actor to play him.

Source: IGN.com

Follow @deshderringer

Categories: News

---