Green Hornet
The Green Hornet is a superhero created in 1936 by George W. Trendle and Fran Striker, with input from radio director James Jewell.
Since his 1930s radio debut, the character has appeared in numerous serialized dramas in a wide variety of media. The Green Hornet appeared in film serials in the 1940s, The Green Hornet television series in the 1960s,, multiple comic book series from the 1940s onwards, and a film in 2011.
The franchise is owned by Green Hornet, Inc., which licenses the property across a wide variety of media that includes comics, films, TV shows, radio and books. As of the 2010s, the comic-book rights are licensed to Dynamite Entertainment.
History
Though various incarnations sometimes change details, in most versions the Green Hornet is the alter ego of Britt Reid, the wealthy young publisher of the Daily Sentinel newspaper. By night, clad in a long green overcoat, gloves, green fedora hat and green mask, Reid fights crime as the mysterious vigilante known as "The Green Hornet". He is accompanied by his loyal and similarly masked partner and confidant, Kato, who drives their technologically advanced car, the "Black Beauty". Though both the police and the general public believe the Hornet to be a wanted criminal, Reid uses that perception to help him infiltrate the underworld, leaving behind for the police the criminals and any incriminating evidence he has found.In the original radio incarnation, Britt Reid is the son of Dan Reid Jr., the nephew of the Lone Ranger, making the Green Hornet the great-nephew of the Ranger. The relationship is alluded to at least once in the radio shows, when Dan Reid visits his son to question him on why Britt has never captured the Hornet. On learning the truth behind his son's dual identity, Dan Reid recalls his days riding with his uncle, as the William Tell Overture plays briefly and softly in the background.
Radio series
The character debuted in The Green Hornet, an American radio program that premiered on January 31, 1936, on WXYZ, the same local Detroit station that originated its companion shows The Lone Ranger and Challenge of the Yukon. Beginning on April 12, 1938, the station supplied the series to the Mutual Broadcasting System radio network, and then to NBC Blue and its successors, the Blue Network and ABC, from November 16, 1939, through September 8, 1950. It returned from September 10 to December 5, 1952. It was sponsored by General Mills from January to August 1948, and by Orange Crush in its brief 1952 run.Film
Serials
The Green Hornet was adapted into two movie serials, 1940's The Green Hornet and, in 1941, The Green Hornet Strikes Again! Disliking the treatment Republic gave The Lone Ranger in two serials, George W. Trendle took his property to Universal Pictures, and was much happier with the results. The first serial, titled simply The Green Hornet, stars Gordon Jones in the title role, albeit dubbed by original radio Hornet Al Hodge whenever the hero's mask was in place, while The Green Hornet Strikes Again! stars Warren Hull. Keye Luke, who played the "Number One Son" in the Charlie Chan films, plays Kato in both. Also starring in both serials are Anne Nagel as Lenore Case, Britt Reid's secretary, and Wade Boteler as Mike Axford, a reporter for the Daily Sentinel, the newspaper that Reid owns and publishes. Ford Beebe directed both serials, partnered by Ray Taylor on The Green Hornet and John Rawlins on The Green Hornet Strikes Again!, with George H. Plympton and Basil Dickey contributing to the screenplays for both serials. The Green Hornet runs for 13 chapters while The Green Hornet Strikes Again! has 15 installments, with the Hornet and Kato smashing a different racket in each chapter. In each serial, they are all linked to a single major crime syndicate which is itself put out of business in the finale, while the radio program had the various rackets completely independent of each other.''The Green Hornet'' (2006)
A 10-minute 2006 French short film titled Le frelon vert is based on the Green Hornet.''The Green Hornet'' (2011)
A film version of the character had been contemplated since the 1990s, with Universal Pictures and Miramax each attempting to develop a film. Sony Pictures announced plans for a feature film of the superhero in 2008. Eventually, Sony Pictures, through its subsidiary Columbia Pictures, released an action-comedy Green Hornet feature on January 14, 2011, starring Jay Chou and Seth Rogen, who co-wrote the script with Superbad co-writer Evan Goldberg. It was directed by Michel Gondry. Jay Chou co-starred as Kato. Also starring were Cameron Diaz as Lenore Case, Edward James Olmos as Mike Axford, David Harbour as Frank Scanlon, Christoph Waltz as the main villain Benjamin Chudnofsky, and Tom Wilkinson as James Reid.Reboot
In 2016, Paramount Pictures and Chernin Entertainment acquired the rights to The Green Hornet and started preliminary work on developing a reboot with Gavin O'Connor as producer and director of the film and Sean O'Keefe as writer. In 2020, Amasia Entertainment gained the rights of the Green Hornet and officially teamed with Universal Pictures for the reboot titled Green Hornet and Kato with David Koepp writing the script. On June 23, 2022, Deadline reported that Leigh Whannell will direct the reboot.Television
''The Green Hornet'' (1966–1967)
The Green Hornet is a television series shown on the ABC U.S. television network. It aired for the 1966–1967 television season and stars Van Williams as both the Green Hornet and Britt Reid, and Bruce Lee as Kato. With his insistence on using his martial arts skills, Bruce Lee stole the show as Kato. This was the first time Asian martial arts fighting was seen on American TV. The show launched Bruce Lee's career as a popular actor in the US as well as in Hong Kong. Audience interest even led to Van Williams asking to learn some martial art moves.Williams and Lee's Green Hornet and Kato appear as anti-heroes in the second season of the Batman TV series in the two-part episode "A Piece of the Action" / "Batman's Satisfaction". The episode ended with Batman himself questioning whether or not the Green Hornet was really a criminal. Unlike the "campy" version of Batman, this version of The Green Hornet was played more seriously.
Animated series
In July 2020, Kevin Smith and WildBrain announced plans to develop a Green Hornet animated series set in the present day and focused on a reimagined Green Hornet and female Kato. On February 28, 2023, Smith confirmed in an episode of Fatman Beyond that the series would be 10 episodes.Comic books
Early comics
Green Hornet comic books began in December 1940. The series, titled Green Hornet Comics published by Helnit Comics with the writing attributed to Fran Striker, being illustrated by Bert Whitman Associates. The stories were loosely based on episodes of the radio show. This series ended after six issues.Several months later, Harvey Comics launched its own version, beginning with issue #7. This series lasted until issue #47 in 1949; during that time it also changed its title twice: first to Green Hornet Fights Crime and later to Green Hornet, Racket Buster.
Harvey additionally used the character in the public-service one-shot War Victory Comics in 1942, and gave him one adventure in each of two issues of All-New Comics, #13 and #14, in 1946.
In 1953, several months after the radio series ended, Dell Comics published a one-shot with the character. Both stories therein share titles with late-era radio episodes and might be adaptations.
In 1967, Gold Key Comics produced a 3-issue series based on the TV show.
NOW Comics
In 1989, NOW Comics introduced a line of Green Hornet comics, initially written by Ron Fortier and illustrated by Jeff Butler. It attempted to reconcile the different versions of the character into a multigenerational epic. This took into account the character's ancestral connection to The Lone Ranger, though due to the legal separation of the two properties, his mask covered his entire face and he could not be called by name. In this interpretation, the Britt of the radio series had fought crime as the Hornet in the 1930s and 1940s before retiring. In NOW's first story, in Green Hornet #1, set in 1945, the nationality of the original Kato is given as Japanese, but because of the American policy regarding the Japanese minority during World War II, Reid referred to Kato as Filipino in order to prevent Kato's being sent to an American internment camp.The NOW comics considered the 1960s television character as the namesake nephew of the original, 1930s–1940s Britt Reid, referred to as "Britt Reid II" in the genealogy, who took up his uncle's mantle after a friend is assassinated. Britt Reid II eventually retired due to a heart attack, and Kato—given the first name Hayashi, after that of the first actor to play Kato on radio—goes on to become a star of ninja movies. The NOW comics established Hayashi Kato as Ikano Kato's son. Britt Reid's nephew, Paul Reid, a concert pianist, takes on the role of the Hornet after his older brother Alan, who had first taken on the mantle, is killed on his debut mission. Paul Reid is assisted by Mishi Kato, Hayashi's much-younger half-sister who was trained by Ikano Kato. Her being female caused problems between the publishers and the rights-holders, who withdrew approval of that character and mandated the return of "the Bruce Lee Kato". After Mishi's departure—explained as orders from her father to replace an injured automobile designer at the Zürich, Switzerland, facility of the family corporation, Nippon Today—Hayashi Kato returned to crime fighting alongside the Paul Reid Green Hornet. Mishi Kato returned in volume two as the Crimson Wasp, following the death of her Swiss police-officer fiancé, on orders of a criminal leader. In NOW's final two issues, vol. 2, #39–40, a fourth Kato—Kono Kato, grandson of Ikano and nephew of Hayashi and Mishi—took over as Paul Reid's fellow masked vigilante. The comics also introduced Diana Reid, the original Britt Reid's daughter, who had become district attorney after the TV series' Frank Scanlon had retired. A romantic relationship eventually formed between her and Hayashi Kato.
NOW's first series began in 1989 and lasted 14 issues. Volume Two began in 1991 and lasted 40 issues, ending in 1995 when the publisher went out of business. Kato starred solo in a four-issue miniseries in 1991, and a two-issue follow-up in 1992, both written by Mike Baron. He also wrote a third, first announced as a two-issue miniseries, then as a graphic novel, but it was never released due to the company's collapse.
Tales of the Green Hornet, consisting of nine issues spread out over three volumes, presented stories of the two previous Hornets. Volume One featured Green Hornet II, and its story was plotted by Van Williams, star of the 1960s TV series, and scripted by Bob Ingersoll. The follow-ups were written by James Van Hise. Other miniseries included the three-issue The Green Hornet: Solitary Sentinel; the four-issue Sting of the Green Hornet, set during World War II and Clint McElroy's three-issue Dark Tomorrow, featuring a criminal Green Hornet in 2080 being fought by the Kato of that era.
Discounting depictions of the cars utilized by the 1940s and 1960s Hornets, there were two versions of the Black Beauty used in the NOW comic series. The first was based on the Pontiac Banshee. The second was a four-door sedan based on the eleventh-generation Oldsmobile 98 Touring Sedan.