The upcoming Marvel Studios feature Armor Wars, originally planned as a six-episode Disney+ TV series, is being reworked to a theatrical movie.

As reported by THR, the project will retain its star Don Cheadle, reprising his long-running Marvel Cinematic Universe role as James Rhodes aka War Machine, as well as its head writer Yassir Lester. Although no release window for Armor Wars had been announced when the change was made, it's expected that it will now be pushed back in Marvel's slate of upcoming features.

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Armor Wars was announced in 2020 as part of Disney's Investor Day 2020, with its logo being revealed more recently, at Disney's D23 Expo. The show was intended to adapt the 1987 arc from Marvel Comics in which Tony Stark -- played by Robert Downey Jr. in the MCU until the character's death in Avengers: Endgame -- discovered that his armor technology had fallen into the wrong hands and was being used by villains for their own nefarious purposes. Iron Man and his allies subsequently entered into an arms race to protect the world from the advanced weapons he had created. The popular Armor Wars comic story was written by Bob Layton and David Micheline with illustration by Mark D. Bright and Barry Windsor-Smith.

Iron Man's Armored Legacy

Cheadle described the Armor Wars adaptation saying, "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." The actor also addressed the differences between his character Rhodey and Tony in spite of the close friendship they shared: "I don't know, I mean I think that Rhodey is his own dude. I don't think that anyone can really step into Tony Stark or Iron Man's shoes, I think he did that as well as anyone could ever do it. But I think we're going to learn a lot about what Rhodey does want and who he is and what his... place in the firmament of MCU will ultimately be."

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The Armor Wars movie will take its place in an ever-growing list of interconnected stories coming from Marvel Studios, including Secret Invasion, which will star Cheadle alongside Samuel L. Jackson and Ben Mendelsohn, likewise returning to their roles from previous movies. Secret Invasion is set to premiere on Disney+ in 2023.

A release date for Armor Wars has not yet been announced.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter