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.