After playing James Rhodes for well over a decade, Don Cheadle is getting the chance to headline his own project in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige announced during Disney’s 2020 Investor Day that they were developing an Armor Wars TV series, but the studio wound up changing their minds and the project will now be a movie instead.
Just why did Marvel Studios decide to turn Armor Wars into a movie? Producer Nate Moore explained during a recent interview on The Town with Matthew Belloni that the project was simply getting too pricey for a TV series.
“I mean in that case, there were some great ideas that were coming out for that show, but that, to be quite honest, felt too big for that show. […] Kind of conceptually, and from… You know, our Disney+ shows are awesome, and we love them, but the budgets are not the same as the features, that’s no secret,” Moore explained. “And when you’re talking about a show that wants to be about seeing all the cool armors and, you know, Don Cheadle interacting with all these armors and sort of the legacy of Tony Stark, that became kind of cost prohibitive to do as a show. And we realized as a feature, not only can we get into some of the beautiful imagery that is from publishing, and there’s certainly an Armor Wars run, but also there’s ways then to leverage the ideas of that movie and affect other movies down the line.“
Don Cheadle has played James Rhodes since Iron Man 2 back in 2010 when he took over the role from Terrence Howard. Since then, he has gone on to appear in Iron Man 3, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Captain America: Civil War, Captain Marvel, Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers: Endgame. He also appeared in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, What If…?, and will appear alongside Samuel L. Jackson and Ben Mendelsohn in the upcoming Secret Invasion series. Speaking of Secret Invasion, it was stated during Marvel’s panel at the D23 Expo that Secret Invasion would lead directly into Armor Wars. It’s not clear if this change will affect that plan.
