Hey everybody, The CW has revealed an official first look at Arrow, featuring Stephen Amell in costume as DC Comics hero Green Arrow.  The dark image has Amell as a hooded Oliver Queen, highlighting the stripped-down costume.  That costume is designed by three-time Oscar winner Colleen Atwood, who is a favorite of both Tim Burton and Johnny Depp, with credits including Dark Shadows, The Rum Diary, Sleepy Hollow, The Tourist, and Big Fish, as well as Joe vs. the Volcano and The Silence of the Lambs.

Smallville enjoyed a decade-long run as the face of DC Comics on television, and since it ended last season, Warner Bros. and The CW have evidently been looking for another DC property to take its place on the idiot box.  Just over two weeks ago, we learned about Arrow, a potential pilot that would make use of Green Arrow, the bow and arrow wielding protector of fictitious Star City created by Mort Weisinger and George Papp in 1941.  Well, it's going to pilot, and it has found a leading man, as Stephen Amell has been cast as Oliver Queen.

A few weeks ago we learned that The CW was on the verge of ordering a pilot for a potential series based on Green Arrow, the DC Comics hero created by Mort Weisinger and George Papp way back in 1941.  Last week, according to The Hollywood Reporter, the network ordered the pilot to a series that would be entitled Arrow, along with pilots for a Sex and the City prequel, and a contemporary Beauty and the Beast.  Though the character, Oliver Queen, played a major recurring role on the long-lived but recently closed-out DC series Smallville, actor Justin Hartley will not be returning, and a newly-revealed casting breakdown gives a good idea of this new Arrow, along with his supporting characters.

Over the last ten years and change, superheroes of every stripe have come to dominate the blockbuster movie landscape, yet for the most part, the vast plains of television have yet to be successfully colonized by spandex-sporting neon gods.  There have been plenty of kid-oriented animated series, but not so many live-action series.  There are currently several in development, meaning that the idiot box might just finally get its share of superheroics.  One potential show that might just become a reality is an in-development Green Arrow series based on the DC Comics character.

Almost a decade ago, actor Nathan Fillion earned his place in the sci-fi nerd Pantheon by playing the irascible rogue Captain Malcolm Reynolds on the short-lived but much-loved Joss Whedon series Firefly and the subsequent movie Serenity.  Since then, the fervency of his very vocal fanbase has only increased, and they'll let out a delighted squeal today, as Fillion is set to reprise his voice role as the Green Lantern in Justice League: Doom, the upcoming DC Universe film from Warner Premiere.

Fillion previously voiced Hal Jordan and his superheroic alter ego in the animated film Green Lantern: Emerald Knights, and he joins fellow DC veterans Kevin Conroy (the grizzled voice of Batman in countless iterations since Batman: The Animated Series), Tim Daly (The Big Guy on Superman: The Animated Series), and Michael Rosenbaum (who has voiced the Flash, and also played Lex Luthor on Smallville).  Also in the cast are Olivia D'Abo, Susan Eisenberg, and Carlos Alazaqui, familiar as Garcia on Reno 911 and another frequent DC voice actor.

Comic book superheroes have been a dominant force at multiplexes for the better part of a decade, but the only real success in putting a familiar superhero front-and-center on a television series was Smallville, which followed a pre-Superman Clark Kent for ten years.  Now that Smallville has ended its considerable run, though, DC Comics and Warner Bros are looking to maintain a presence on the idiot box with some new adaptations in development.  The latest is The Spectre, as Fox has just begun developing a pilot based on avenging spirit who goes all the way back to the Golden Era of comics.

For some time now we have been hearing about how Warner Bros. plans to dig into the plethora of DC Comics characters and utilize them more in film and on TV once the long-running series Smallville, and the film juggernaut known as Harry Potter, have both run their course. With the two franchises recently ending their decade long runs, Deadline is reporting today that the studio has tapped Supernatural executive producer Eric Kripke to bring Boston Brand, A.K.A. Deadman, to the small screen with his own series. 

Several news outlets are now reporting that director Zack Snyder has cast veteran actor and former-Morpheus Laurence Fishburne (Apocalypse Now, Boyz n the Hood, The Matrix) as the Daily Planet's Editor-in-Chief Perry White in his Superman reboot, Man of Steel. 

So we know that Man of Steel, director Zack Snyder's cinematic Superman reboot, will definitely include yet another variation on the Kryptonian's origin story, which means we'll be seeing plenty of Smallville, Kansas when Man of Steel rolls around in the summer of 2013.  Earlier this month, set photos of Smallville's main street under construction in Illinois indicated that some superpowered action would occur there, and today, we have some set photos providing thorough documentation of the house inhabited by Martha Kent (Diane Lane), Jonathan Kent (Kevin Costner) and the young Clark Kent.

So far, all the major, official news items from the cinematic Superman reboot Man of Steel have pertained more or less exclusively to casting, with Warner Bros making big announcements for the casting of Henry Cavill or Amy Adams.  All other information is received in tiny parcels of inference based on the meager informational nuggets available.  With Zack Snyder's film set to begin production later this summer, for example, exterior sets are under construction in Plano, Illinois.  The old-fashioned, almost Rockwellian look of the buildings strongly suggests that they'll stand in for Smallville, Kansas.  More than that, several look to feature built-in battle damage, from which we can infer that an action sequence or two might just take place in Clark Kent's Midwestern hometown.