Green Lantern Shines in New Animated Series for Cartoon Network

The Greenlantern Green Lantern may not be as popular as his fellow Justice Leaguers Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, but in comic-book circles, he's a fan favorite with a vibrant decades-long history in the pages of DC Comics. Though the character's theatrical debut last summer was underwhelming, a new TV adventure finally gives the character his due. The fast-paced and eye-popping Green Lantern: The Animated Series gets a special hour-long sneak preview tonight on Cartoon Network before returning for weekly episodes next year. Overseen by animation maestro Bruce Timm (Batman: The Animated Series, Justice League) along with producer Giancarlo Volpe (Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Avatar: The Last Airbender), the computer-generated series features Hal Jordan, a member of the intergalactic police force known as the Green Lantern Corps, who wields power rings which can form constructs in whatever shape they imagine. "Hal really enjoys the thrills of danger," Timm says. "And like all Green Lanterns, he's pure of heart, he controls his fear. Personality wise, he's somewhere between Captain Kirk and Han Solo. He's not quite as roguish as Han Solo and not quite as much of a grown-up as Captain Kirk can be." Timm and Volpe drew inspiration from comic-book writer Geoff Johns' reintroduction of the character over the past few years. "We focused more on the recent stuff that Geoff has done, but a lot of his work is inspired by stuff he grew up reading as a kid," Volpe says. "It's a little bit more of the recent take on Green Lantern, as inspired by the rich back story." One of Johns' biggest innovations to the Green Lantern mythos was to introduce an entire spectrum of Lantern corps, including the rage-fueled Red Lanterns, the hope-filled Blue Lanterns, and the greedy Orange Lanterns. The Red Lanterns, who will be the villains of this series, are a nasty bunch led by the ruthless, appropriately named, Atrocitus. "He has a personal vendetta against the Guardians, the leaders of the Green Lantern Corps," Volpe says. "He is convinced that they decimated his homeworld and countless others, and they need to pay for it. Whatever terrible things happened in his past, he wants payback for it, and so does the rest of his army." It remains to be seen if - or more likely, when - other Lantern Corps will show up in the series. "One of the challenges of CG is that you can't really load up a show with countless characters like you can in a traditionally animated show," Volpe says of the expensive, labor-intensive format. "So we have to be economic and prudent with who appears in the show. We have our wish list and we go down it very slowly. But there are plenty of other opportunities to get the other Lanterns in for sure." Green Lantern: The Animated Series premieres tonight at 7/6c on Cartoon Network. Subscribe to TV Guide Magazine now!

Dish Network Posts 111,000 Subs Decline for Third Quarter

Dish Network on Monday reported subscriber losses and weaker-than-expected financials for its latest quarter. The satellite TV giant, led by chairman Charles Ergen, recorded a 111,000 subscriber decline in the third quarter. The year-ago period had seen a 29,000 loss. Analysts had on average expected a sub drop of around 80,000. Dish ended September with 13.95 million subscribers. The company also posted a 30 percent third-quarter earnings improvement to $319.1 million, but the figure missed Wall Street expectations. Revenue rose 12.3 percent to $3.6 billion. Dish's stock rose 4 percent in early trading as analysts said some investors had feared sub losses of as high as the 150,000 range. Email: Georg.Szalai@thr.com Twitter: @georgszalai Related Topics Dish Network

Exclusive 2 . 5 Males Video: Watch Jon Cryer Become Charlie!

Jon Cryer Charlie Harper has returned! Well, kind of.On Monday's episode of 2 . 5 Males, the spirit of Charlie Sheen's dead decadent bachelor will rear his ugly mind as... Alan (Jon Cryer)?Take a look at photos from 2 . 5 MenDon't worry. You will find no Ouija board shenanigans or anything. But poor Alan has not yet be prepared for his bro's dying, so after Walden (Ashton Kutcher) gives Charlie's piano, Alan manages to lose his marbles and becomes Charlie.Watch this exclusive clip below to determine Cryer do his best Sheen. 2 . 5 Males airs Mondays at 9/8c on CBS.

TALENT SIGNINGS: New Clients at CAA, ICM, Gersh, APA

Frazer Harrison/Getty Images Because of CAAFrom L-R: Azita Ghanizada, Kay Actress Azita Ghanizada, a collection regular on Syfy's Alphas, has signed with APA. Ghanizada's television credits include Castle, Ghost Whisperer and the way I Met Your Mother, among others. She's also represented byKatie Mason at Luber Roklin Entertainment. Nina Fiore and John Herrera, who recently closed a deal to produce for Alphas, have signed with CAA.Formerly, they were authors on SyFy's Eureka. They are also represented by managerJeff Section of Area Entertainment. Japanese director Ryuhei Kitamura, who made his American debut with 2008 horror filmThe Evening time Meat Train, has signed with ICM. Kitamura has directed several Japanese films, including Azumi and Versus. He's also represented by Jon Karas of Infinity Management Worldwide. Rapper-singer Kay, whose debut album will probably be released noisy . 2012 through Interscope Records, has signed with CAA. This month, she'll tour Canada with LMFAO. She's also represented by managerDougie Bohay and attorney Chris Taylor, all of Last Gang Management. Author-producer-actress Laura Kightlinger, who's speaking to for CBS' 2 Broke Women, has signed with Gersh. Her television writing credits include Saturday Evening Live and Daria,she's came out on Lucky Louie and offered as speaking to producer on$#*! My Dad States.Kightlingeris also represented by managerDavid Martin at Avalon Management and attorney Erik Hyman of Loeb & Loeb. Chinese director Yang Shupeng, whose film The Our god in the Undercover will probably be released noisy . 2012, has signed with CAA. The first sort journalist was formerly an editor and program director with Closed-circuit television, China's condition-run television broadcaster. Email: Daniel.Burns@THR.com Twitter: @DanielNMiller CAA Gersh Agency ICM APA

Cruz rules ASCAP Honours London

Taio Cruz won top honors within the 31st ASCAP Honours London on Wednesday evening, while using undertaking rights org's songwriter of year and song of year kudos. Locked in the Grosvenor House Hotel, the kudos honored most likely probably the most completed tunes from people of Britain's Undertaking Right Society whose repertory is licensed by ASCAP throughout 2010. Cruz's "Dynamite" registered since the song of year champion, with EMI Music Posting taking honors for author of year, as well as the Vanguard award -- which Cruz had won a year ago -- prone to youthful rapper Plan B. The show also featured a tribute to legendary lyricist Hal David, in celebration of his 90th birthday. Albert Hammond, Ough Ross, Madeline Bell and ASCAP prexy Paul Williams were available to do a selection of David's plans. Contact the number newsroom at news@variety.com

Lindsay Lohan Returns To The Court

First Released: November 2, 2011 1:31 PM EDT Credit: Getty Images Caption Lindsay Lohan arrives on her probation breach hearing in the Airport terminal Courthouse in La on November 2, 2011 La, Calif. -- Lindsay Lohan has showed up in a La courthouse for any probation breach hearing that may finish using the actress being delivered to jail. The 25-year-old actress showed up about ten minutes in early stages Wednesday. A judge suspended Lohans probation two days ago following the actress was ended from the community service assignment in a womens shelter. The Mean Women star has since been carrying out community service in the county morgue. A town district attorney is promoting the celebrity be delivered back to jail on her latest breach of the order from the court. She remains on probation for any 2007 drunken driving situation along with a misdemeanor thievery situation. Superior Court Judge Stephanie Sautner has expressed exasperation with Lohans behavior and it has requested prosecutors to determine just how much incarceration Lohan could receive. Copyright 2011 through the Connected Press. All privileges reserved. These components might not be released, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

AOL Shares Rise More Than 10% Early Wednesday

As part of YouTube's new investment in entertainment channels, News Corp-owned IGN Entertainment has partnered with Elisabeth Murdoch's Shine Group company Reveille to develop a new slate of broadcast-quality shows aimed at the growing video game demographic. The series, which will range from short-format to television-length, will debut in early 2012 on START, YouTube's new video game channel produced by IGN.our editor recommendsAnalyst: YouTube Channels No Immediate Threat to Entertainment CompaniesYouTube Announces TV Initiative With 100 Niche Channels IGN has attracted over 1 billion views from its current YouTube offerings, but is now taking production to the next step with the intent of seeing some content migrate beyond the Internet. START will launch with new shows like Celebrity Assassin, IGN Pro Gaming, The Next Game Boss and Game Over. Roy Bahat, president of IGN Entertainment, talks about START in this exclusive interview. The Hollywood Reporter: What are your plans with START? Roy Bahat: We believe there is a gap in entertaining content about games on a big screen. Games are the number one leisure activity for guys under the age of 35. Ninety-one percent of kids under the age of 17 play games. We believe that games, as a genre, should be represented with what you see on TV around sports, music, film and sci-fi and fantasy. There should be hit television content about games and we just see this YouTube channel as a great chance to experiment and search for that. THR: What type of length are you looking at for this type of content? Bahat: The length is going to be longer than what you typically might see for the Web all the way up to what might work for television. Some of the stuff is going to be seven, eight minutes long. Some of it might be twenty-two minutes long or even longer. THR: What's the rollout plan in terms of when people would start being able to see content? Bahat: In the beginning, that's something we're doing in partnership with YouTube. As soon as the channels roll out we'll be there with them. It's in the beginning of the new calendar year, basically. THR: What shows will you be launching with? Bahat: The Next Game Boss competition series is something we're going to expand on when we launch. It has a couple of episodes on IGN already and it's a reality show that allows gamers to get a job in the video game industry. We will be doing some games news and stuff like that with Game Over, it's just not going to be the predominant thing on the channel. It will be just mixed in among other things like Celebrity Assassin, where celebrities pick up a game controller and talk about their new projects, and IGN Pro League, which will focus on eSports. THR: For games news, will it be similar to what we see on the Internet today? Bahat: It's an expanded version of what we see on the Internet probably with somewhat different pacing. We're going to be fundamentally presuming you're watching it on a big screen and leaning back. We're going to try to focus on making it that kind of content. THR: What kind of production quality will these shows have? Bahat: One of the things we've tried really hard to do at IGN is do stuff that's quick so we can capture footage here in the office when somebody wants to riff about a game or say something funny, but doing it at quality that looks great. What's great is that every year the difference between a Flip Cam and something that takes reasonably well-lit HD video, is actually not that big anymore. The intent is for it all to look great so that the content makes brands feel comfortable associating their name with. That's not true of user-generated content out there or of all the stuff that's shot at lower production quality. That's not to say we're going to have ten-person crews. We're just going to focus on doing things that look great, but are fast and easy to do that brands would want to be associated with. THR: How do you see this content differing from what we've seen Machinima do with YouTube in recent years? Bahat: We've also worked very closely with YouTube. We have a billion views to date on YouTube. I'd say You Tube is a platform that's been working in a pretty fair way with all partners. The content that YouTube is now funding is going to be different from everything that's currently on the platform because there's going to be more dollars going into the content. That means you'll probably see in these channels less of the sole content creator doing gameplay commentary and more things that have Hollywood-caliber talent working on them. There's great stuff being produced by sole independent content guys and we love working with them, but I think you'll see a different kind of professional caliber of talent at work. THR: Who are you working with from Hollywood on these projects? Bahat: Our partner in producing this channel is Shine Group and they're the makers of The Office, Master Chef and The Biggest Loser. Our intent in doing this was to bring television caliber content to this opportunity. Related Topics YouTube IGN