Marvel’s Disney+ Series to Be Reworked Into Feature Film

Armor Wars, Marvel’s six-episode Disney+ series, will be turned into a movie, according to Deadline. Don Cheadle is set to reprise his role as War Machine (aka Colonel James Rhodes), while the series’ writer Yassir Lester will go on to pen the movie. The series was initially announced during the 2020 Disney Investor Day. Deadline reported that no director is currently attached, and there is no word on when the movie will be released in the Marvel Cinematic Universe stages between 2023 and 2025.

Iron Man (Vol. 1) #225 (December 1987) to #231 (June 1988) was devoted to the “Armor Wars” storyline written by David Michelinie and Bob Layton, and illustrated by Mark Bright. This series, also known as “The Stark Wars,” portrays Iron Man as he battles the Spymaster, who steals Stark technology. In the following issues, “Armor Wars” is set up by Iron Man’s encounter with Force. This year’s D23 revealed that Armor Wars would commence directly after Samuel L Jackson’s Secret Invasion, which showed its first trailer at the event. 

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Cheadle told our sister site ComicBook.com that the series (now movie) would follow a similar storyline but with a classic MCU twist. “If you know anything about the lore, and you’ve read the comic books, you understand that it’s a series that was built around Tony’s Stark Tech getting out and Rhodey taking it on to go get this tech back from the bad hands, the bad actors whose hands it is in,” the actor revealed. 

The longtime Marvel lead only revealed the basics of the show’s plot but refused to elaborate on Rhodey’s reaction to the death of his best friend, Tony Stark. Rhodey will be in a “very different place” in the new series, adding that he is “going to be very surprising to a lot of people.”The great thing is there’s just going to be so much opportunity to learn a lot about him and for him to learn about himself and for us, hopefully, to really be able to get behind what makes him tick.”

Still, Cheadle noted that the MCU will always place its bets on the novelty of the unexpected. “And as Marvel does, it’s also an opportunity to take the mythology and tip it on its head a little bit and come up with different ways to tell the story, so it’s doing that and has done that in spades.”

During a recent interview with Yahoo! Entertainment’s Kevin Polowy, Cheadle also discussed how much longer he plans to keep playing War Machine in the MCU following Armor Wars. The actor said he signed up to do the then-series because “it was interesting and it sounded fun,” and he will maintain a similar standard for future projects. 

“I just kinda take it as it lies, you know what I mean? [Armor Wars] is something that was pitched to me, was something they wanted to do, and it was interesting and sounded fun. An opportunity to actually do more with this character. So yeah, I’m in. You know, at this point… we know there’s going to be more opportunities to do it, nobody’s [twisting] anybody’s arm. It’s like, does this sound like something that would be fun? Is this something where we could really do something that is exciting and is interesting? Cause if not, we don’t need to show up.”