News on the Green Lantern live action film has been sporadic since Ryan Reynolds was announced as getting the lead role back in July. There have been a couple of news stories about the film so I thought maybe it would be a good time to talk about what has been said as well as what it means.

The first story came out several weeks ago regarding budget issues. To boil the issue down – Warner Brothers was unable to secure the deal with Australia earlier on due to revisions being done with the script, locking in the financial rates for the value of the U.S. dollar with their currency. In the meantime the value of the Australian dollar has risen significantly by about sixteen percent, resulting in the need for a major budget increase in order to match the original plan for the film. So what does this mean to the production?

First off, if Warner Brothers cannot reach an agreement with Australia, either they will have to cut budget to bring the expenses in line or they will have to film elsewhere. Rumor has it that scouts have looked into moving the production to Louisiana. That has pushed filming back from starting this fall to next spring. Hopefully Ryan Reynolds contract will not be affected, but rumor has it that he’s looking for a movie to be able to be shot while this is being sorted out. Secondly, if the budget is cut, there’s also the possibility that could affect the rest of the casting (more about that later), the ambition of the script, the quality of the special effects, and/or the quality of the film. So while on the surface this may not majorly affect production there are some potential ramifications that could affect the end product.

The other bit of news that came out this week regards some of the rest of the casting in terms of an apparent open casting call. The roles mentioned in the casting call: Carol Ferris, Sinestro, Hector Hammond, and Abin Sur. This list of characters is no surprise to anyone who knows the mythos. What’s surprising to me is that this is a casting call for characters which should be in the forefront of the film. Given that the studio recruited Ryan Reynolds I expected a similar process for these other major roles. Hopefully this is just a formality and director Martin Campbell has some people in mind. While Abin Sur has the least amount of screen time, we know by the leaked first draft that Hector Hammond is one of the major baddies in the film unless his role has been diminished. And, of course, there are major plots revolving around both Carol and Sinestro in potential sequels, so I hope we get some great actors to fulfill these roles.

The last bit of news is the formation of DC Entertainment. While I think this new company will have a major impact on future films based on DC Comics’ characters, I don’t see it really affecting the Green Lantern film. Apparently this restructuring has been in the works for a couple of years so I would expect that any of the films either released or in production has been looked at with the knowledge that DC Entertainment was coming. There could be a little tweaking here and there to make sure the GL film falls in with the idea that it fits into a shared DC Universe film continuity, but that’s about it.

In any case, the film is moving forward with a summer of 2011 release date. Stay tuned for more news as the weeks progress.