We're kicking off 2024 with a long-awaited Armor Wars update. The project has been in the works for what feels like an eternity, but scooper Daniel Richtman is claiming today that the plan now is for Marvel Studios to find a director in the first quarter of this year.
The idea from there is to get cameras rolling in 2025, presumably putting the movie on track for a 2026/2027 release.
It's also said that Iron Man 2 star Sam Rockwell is in talks to reprise his role as Justin Hammer. We have no details beyond that but have to believe he'd likely be an antagonist given his history with the Armored Avenger (it's worth remembering he was also War Machine's creator).
Rockwell has said on several occasions that he would be open to returning as Hammer and did so as recently as last month in an episode of What If...? There, he played a Variant of the villain who invaded Avengers Tower on Christmas Eve, donning the Hulkbuster armour to battle Happy "The Freak" Hogan.
Asked last year whether he'd like to be part of a project such as Thunderbolts, he responded, "Yeah, definitely. I would be into that. [Thunderbolts] sounds cool...[Hammer's] fun, he's a real Lex Luthor."
We're not anticipating seeing him in that movie, but putting the spotlight on Hammer in Armor Wars makes all the sense in the world after his attempts to usurp Tony Stark back in 2010. When we last saw the Earth-616 version of the character, he was serving time behind bars in the All Hail the King One-Shot.
In November 2022, Armor Wars producer Nate Moore explained why the project became a movie after originally being announced as a Disney+ 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."
"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."
Yassir Lester is penning Armor Wars' screenplay, with Don Cheadle confirmed to star as War Machine after we learned in Secret Invasion that he's seemingly been held captive by the Skrulls since Captain America: Civil War. Dominique Thorne is also expected to return as Riri Williams after starring in Ironheart.
The movie doesn't currently have a confirmed release date.