Chris Pine and Ryan Gosling have both been linked to the Green Lantern role, now another name has been thrown into the mix, one Bradley Cooper (The Hang­over, Alias, Wed­ding Crashers):

[…] I’ve just spent the last hour or so on the phones, track­ing down a rumor I heard, and Hit­Fix can exclu­sively report that Bradley Cooper is now one of the guys most likely to don the suit and slip on the power ring as The Green Lantern for direc­tor Mar­tin Campbell.

Let’s be clear: they have not hired him yet. But the process is far enough along that this is more than just a meet­ing or some spot on a wish list. Keep in mind that Camp­bell likes to see a lot of peo­ple when he’s cast­ing… and even when he’s screen-testing, he seems will­ing to explore as many options as pos­si­ble… but with the film set to shoot later this sum­mer, they’ve got to start mak­ing their choices, and now’s the time to put peo­ple in front of the cam­era and see who really works in the suit.

Update: Ear­lier today we men­tioned the con­firmed Syd­ney film­ing loca­tion for the Green Lantern movie adap­ta­tion. THR have divulged a lit­tle more infor­ma­tion, reveal­ing that the project will have an esti­mated $150m budget.

We’d pre­vi­ously com­mented on the Aus­tralian film­ing loca­tion and scout­ing reports in and around Syd­ney and New South Wales, but today The Aus­tralian con­firms the spe­cific Syd­ney locale. Shoot­ing is expected to begin in Novem­ber and is expected to take six to nine months, this start date is slightly later than the pre­vi­ously reported mid-September. Pre-production shall begin in July.

THE big-budget movie adap­ta­tion of comic super­hero Green Lantern will be filmed in Syd­ney, with pro­duc­tion to begin later this year.

The movie, pro­duced by DC Comics and Warner Broth­ers, will be directed by Mar­tin Camp­bell, the man behind the 2006 James Bond film Casino Royale.

It is expected to cre­ate around 500 jobs in NSW with pre-production to start in July and film­ing to begin in Novem­ber at Sydney’s Fox Studios.

The film­ing is expected to take six to nine months.

“Bring­ing Green Lantern to NSW is a major coup,” Pre­mier Nathan Rees said when mak­ing the announce­ment at Fox Stu­dios today.

“Films such as this invest heav­ily in the local econ­omy and the flow-on effects for local ser­vices such as trans­port, con­struc­tion and the hotel industry.”

We pre­vi­ously reported that Ryan Gosling could be inline to play The Green Lantern, since then the ante on the movie has upped — with the WB plac­ing all its chips in the green bas­ket, given the hes­i­ta­tion and fail­ings of the Super­man and Jus­tice League fran­chises — sug­gest­ing that the Green Lantern role might need re-evaluating.

The IESB are now report­ing a short list of pos­si­ble actors to play the main role, head­ing the list is Star Trek star (Cap­tain Kirk), Chris Pine. Jon Hamm, Sam Wor­thing­ton and Nathan Fil­lion have also been men­tioned. The WB are look­ing for ‘a man’s man under 30′.

We’ll clas­sify this one as rumor for now, espe­cially as Pine’s agent has declined to com­ment, how­ever with film­ing set to begin in Sep­tem­ber it shouldn’t be too long before we see an offi­cial announcement.

The WB are set to begin film­ing The Green Lantern in mid-September in Aus­tralia, report Pro­duc­tion Weekly. The Aus­tralian loca­tion doesn’t come as much of a sur­prise given the loca­tion scout­ing reports we com­mented on in Decem­ber. Mean­while the pro­duc­tion crew has cre­ated a base camp at the Tribeca West com­plex pro­duc­tion offices, sit­u­ated in West Los Angeles.

Update: @WarnerBrosEnt sched­uled to begin film­ing mid-September in Aus­tralia on “Green Lantern”

Com­ing Soon had the oppor­tu­nity to talk with pro­ducer Don­ald De Line (Body of Lies) about the direc­tion that Green Lantern is taking:

“Our story is the Hal Jor­dan ori­gin story, but cre­at­ing the char­ac­ter of Hal Jor­dan that is a real char­ac­ter that will res­onate with the fan­base is what we need to do. You have to make him cred­i­ble and some­body to care about and tell a good story, and I think if we do that, we’ll be okay.”

“It’s going to be a series of big stakes and big action, but it absolutely has a sense of humor,” he replied when asked about the humor quo­tient of the movie. “I think peo­ple accept real life, even with really seri­ous sit­u­a­tions, with humor as part of that sit­u­a­tion, as we expe­ri­ence in life, you have to have that. That’s how peo­ple cope, so they’ve done it so well in these other movies. I think that peo­ple are absolutely ready. It doesn’t have to fall on one side of the fence vs. the other.”

Lastly, we asked him to address the rumors about them delib­er­ately going younger with Hal Jor­dan, some­thing that came out of the bogus sto­ries about Anton Yelchin audi­tion­ing, but De Line denied the inten­tion to cast younger. “Not really, late ‘20s, early ‘30s.”

We have a date! Warner Bros. have announced a whole slew of movie release dates, included in this list was the Green Lantern movie adap­ta­tion which is set for Christ­mas 2010, 17th Decem­ber to be more accu­rate. This falls on the same date as Sony’s ani­mated Smurfs movie.

Mar­tin Camp­bell, direc­tor of Casino Royale, Gold­en­Eye and Ver­ti­cal Limit is in talks to direct the Green Lantern movie adap­ta­tion, report Vari­ety. With WB’s big Super­man and Jus­tice League movie plans falling through it looks like Green Lantern is mov­ing to the top of the hit list; bring­ing with it Mar­tin Campbell’s tal­ent and expe­ri­ence and a renewed desire to make this much more than another super­hero fran­chise, espe­cially given the recent and phe­nom­e­nal suc­cess of that dark and emo­tional Bat­man movie.

Greg Berlanti was orig­i­nally inline to direct, he has since been attached to the movie, “This is where I leave you”, yet remains a strong influ­ence as one of the three writ­ers that penned the screen­play (the oth­ers being Marc Guggen­heim and Michael Green).

The Syd­ney Morn­ing Her­ald are cur­rently report­ing that New South Wales and Vic­to­ria are in a bid­ding bat­tle to attract the busi­ness of The Green Lantern movie production.

The film­mak­ers have been scout­ing loca­tions and inter­view­ing key crew in Syd­ney for a movie with an esti­mated bud­get of more than $150 mil­lion. Cen­tring on a test pilot who uses a magic ring to become a crime-fighting superhero.