Marvel is making an unexpected U-turn on Don Cheadle's series Armor Wars.
Deadline reports that Marvel Studios has made wholesale changes to a planned Disney+ series bringing back Emmy nominee Cheadle as James 'Rhodey' Rhodes aka War Machine.
Instead, Kevin Feige and his team have made the decision to turn the project into a movie, though there is no director attached to the project at this time. Armor Wars also has no place on MCU's loaded Phase 5 release schedule.
Writer and comedian Yassir Lester was brought on board by Disney last year to oversee the TV version of Armor Wars and is expected to stay as it transitions into a film project.
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The TV show-turned-movie is being adapted from a notable Iron Man comics storyline by David Michelinie and Bob Layton, published in the late 1980s.
In this live-action version, Rhodey has to face a crisis on all fronts when his late friend Tony Stark's technology falls into the wrong hands.
There has been no official comment from Cheadle or Marvel Studios about this huge development yet.
Cheadle will next appear in the crossover Disney+ series Marvel's Secret Invasion, in which Nick Fury and some of his former SHIELD colleagues try to stop an invasion from the shape-shifting Skrulls.
Related: Marvel star Don Cheadle making show about Black Lives Matter origin
The show's trailer reveals that Rhodey may know more about the Skrulls than Fury expected, but his comrades in the US government have been underestimating how dangerous the alien species can be.
The series will also feature Olivia Colman, Emilia Clarke, Kingsley Ben-Adir and, of course, Samuel L Jackson back in the eyepatch as Nick Fury.
Marvel's Secret Invasion will stream exclusively on Disney+ next year.
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