According to DC Studios, Xolo Maridueña's Jaime Reyes will be part of the DCU. Whether the Blue Beetle movie is actually the first movie set in that new reality is less clear, though director Angel Manuel Soto has high hopes for the franchise moving forward.
Talking to The Playlist, the filmmaker confirmed he views Blue Beetle as the first chapter in a trilogy of movies.
"Of course, we can’t put everything in one movie, and that’s why this is the first act of a bigger saga," Soto explains. "There’s so much more to be said that I’m really looking forward to saying."
"We wanted to tell the movie in a way that felt like, what if Latin cinema embraced a superhero film? We spend time with Jamie, with his family; we know what’s at stake and how they behave. The Scarab is an intruder, so when it attaches to him and all hell breaks loose, the stakes are more personal, and you care more."
"'Blue Beetle' [the first film] is Jamie’s story," he continues. "We wanted to focus on him and his family. By the end of the movie, there will be questions about the scarab, and I hope to answer them. For the next film, I hope to tell the whole story of what happened to the scarab, where he comes from, why he was sent, and hopefully in the end, who they have to defeat."
With Blue Beetle currently eyeing an opening weekend of less than $20 million, we're not overly optimistic that a sequel will happen. It's not outside the realm of possibility if the movie has legs both domestically and overseas, but the DCEU brand is badly tarnished.
In the same interview, Soto talked about pitching a Bane movie to Warner Bros. Confirming that some of his ideas were eventually used for Blue Beetle's villainous Carapax, he went so far as to say there's even a chance both characters hail from Pago Island.
"It feels like he’s very misunderstood," the director says of Bane's place in the DC Universe. "We are used to being introduced to the world in movies as villains. It’s almost a given that we’re born that way. When we talk about the history of Latin America, nobody dares to question what happened before. I think that what Bane represents is the history of interventionism in Latin America and the Caribbean."
Soto is clearly a big DC fan, but only time will tell whether he has a place in DC Studios' DCU. As for Blue Beetle, that's set to be released in theaters on August 18.