Armor Wars was first announced as a Disney+ TV series in 2020. Yassir Lester was hired as Head Writer in August 2021 but countless delays followed until, in September 2022, we learned it was being redeveloped as a movie.
We've heard little to nothing about the project since, though Secret Invasion was meant to set the stage for the movie by suggesting Rhodey had been replaced by a shape-shifting Skrull. That likely happened after he was injured by Vision during Captain America: Civil War's airport battle.
It was a neat idea on the surface, but fans weren't happy about how that diminished his farewell to Tony Stark in Avengers: Endgame. The Skrull Rhodey also didn't exactly do enough during his time as War Machine to make the switch as impactful as required.
When Don Cheadle was recently asked where things stand with Armor Wars, he replied, "You can find out and let me know. [Laughs] I don’t know, I’m not sure where anything is right now. I think things are going through a lot of changes, and we’ll see what happens, we’ll see what it is."
However, we now have a far more positive update courtesy of Lester.
"I think that, like, Marvel is constantly in a state of, like, 'What is the most interesting?' And I honestly believe some of their films should have been series and some of their series should have been films," the filmmaker told ComicBook.com. "And I think that they’re taking that more into account, giving that a little bit more thought now."
"As long as they haven’t started shooting it yet, it’s kind of like, who cares?" he added, before admitting, "I think that the story that I told is a very fun series."
It's unclear exactly how involved Lester is with this new iteration of Armor Wars, though he would go on to suggest the movie version will get to the point much quicker than what would have been more of a character piece with a TV show's extended runtime.
"Given like with Secret Invasion – all these other things [like] the way Rhodey’s story needs to fit into the bigger universe, there is a quicker version that kind of propels him back into the story a little bit quicker, as opposed to a meditation on who the character is."
Armor Wars doesn't have a release date and likely won't happen until after Avengers: Secret Wars...if indeed it happens at all. Click here to see the armoured heroes and villains we'd like to see in the project.