A ‘Blue Beetle’ Film Is Happening With Director Angel Manuel Soto
by Erik Amaya
It’s finally going to be Jaime Reyes’s time to shine.
Variety reports Warner Bros. Pictures is finally moving forward with a Blue Beetle film with director Angel Manuel Soto now taking the reins. Created by Charles Wojtkowski in 1939 as Dan Garrett, an adventurer powered by a special vitamin. The character continued to be revised as he became the property of different comic book companies — the vitamin became a mystical scarab — eventually evolving into inventor Ted Kord. He finally joined the DC pantheon in the early ’80s; where he inspired Watchmen‘s Nite Owl and became a fan favorite in his own right thanks to a humorous take on the Justice League which paired him with Booster Gold.
And then, sometime later, he was killed by a teammate in cold blood.
The film will focus on the most recent iteration, Mexican-American teenager Jaime Reyes. Devised by Keith Giffen, John Rogers, and Cully Hamner, the character reclaimed the scarab of his Golden Age counterpart, but it was altered from a mystical totem to an advanced piece of alien technology which generates his costume and abilities. Like many teen superheroes, Jaime had to learn to balance his high school life with the impossible tension of alien invasions, multiversal crises, and meeting Superman. The character soon generated his own fan following.
For over a decade, it seemed Jaime was being readied for his own TV series or film. He appeared in one episode of Smallville, but neither he nor Ted Kord have ever shown up in the Arrowverse — although Ted’s company gets a namecheck every so often. Rumors would persist of Geoff Johns writing a film to feature Jaime and Booster, but nothing concrete ever developed.
As with all DC Films projects, it is unclear how quickly the film will move forward into production. Indeed, this has been some time coming, but like Black Adam, the wait could always be just a little longer.