Marvel’s ‘Armor Wars’ With Don Cheadle Pivots From Series to Feature

Marvel’s upcoming Disney+ Armor Wars is a series no longer. The studio has shaken things up by announcing it will now be a feature instead of the originally planned six-episode show.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the series will be redeveloped into a movie. Unfortunately, this also means the project will be pushed further down the development timeline.

(Credit: Marvel Studios/Disney)

Don Cheadle is set to reprise his role as Colonel James “Rhodey” Rhodes, AKA War Machine — which he has played since 2010’s Iron Man 2. Yassir Lester, who was set to run the writers’ room for the series, will instead write the feature.

According to sources, the development process led to a discovery that the project is better suited to a feature than a series. The Marvel team has done a similar switch-up before when Hawkeye was moved from a feature to a series. On the plus side, this means it will get a theatrical release, like all Marvel movies.

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The series was to be based on the 1987 and 1988 Iron Man comics written by David Michelinie and Bob Layton, where the idea was first introduced of Iron Man’s incredibly advanced tech falling into the hands of villains. The idea was originally pitched as a series to give space for each episode to highlight multiple types of armor. With this pivot, they will likely have to limit the armor featured in the film.

Cheadle will next appear in another MCU Disney+ series, Secret Invasion, which also stars Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Mendelsohn, Olivia Colman, and Emilia Clarke. It is set to hit the streamer in 2023. The actor also appeared in 2021’s The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, earning an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Guest Actor in Drama Series along the way.

Stay tuned for more on the project as Armor Wars continues to take shape at Disney and Marvel.