DC’s cosmic superhero Green Lantern has had a hard time finding its place on screen, with several scripts that never got greenlit and 2011’s bomb, Green Lantern, starring Ryan Reynolds. 

But DC is partnering with HBO Max to try again with new series, Lanterns, starring Kyle Chandler as a grizzled Hal Jordan and Aaron Pierre as his chosen replacement, John Stewart. While Green Lantern remains a cosmic space cop fighting a somewhat terrifying shape-shifting enemy known as the Manhunters, this series will be more grounded on Earth and play out like a dark buddy-cop story.

If anyone can pull that off, it’s co-creators and co-writers Chris Mundy, Damon Lindelof and Tom King. Lindelof is known for such series as ABC’s Lost, HBO’s The Leftovers and probably the closest comp, HBO’s Watchmen, which also was adapted from comics. Mundy will bring the noir vibe as the creative force behind such series as Netflix’s Ozark and HBO’s True Detective: Night Country. And Tom King, who worked as a CIA counter-terrorism officer from 2001-09, brings the legitimacy as the writer of such DC Comics as The Vision and Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, which inspired the Disney Plus series WandaVision and the recent Warner Bros. movie, Supergirl, respectively.

Besides Chandler and Pierre, the series also stars Garret Dillahunt, Poorna Jagannathan, Kelly Macdonald, Laura Linney, Jason Ritter, Ulrich Thomsen, Nathan Fillion, J. Alphonse Nicholson and Jasmine Cephas Jones. Fillion plays a third Lantern known as Guy Gardner who fans first saw in James Gunn’s recent Superman retelling and he also has voiced Hal Jordan in six different DC animated productions.

The eight-episode season of Lanterns debuts Sunday, August 16 at 9 p.m. ET/PT on HBO and will be available to stream on HBO Max.