Don Cheadle's Armor Wars: Everything we know so far

Armor Wars is an upcoming feature film from the Marvel Cinematic Universe that is currently under production. Actor Don Cheadle will be seen taking on the lead role in the movie as James Rhodes, aka War Machine. The character was first seen in the fan-favorite Iron Man 2. Since then, he has been a part of six other Marvel movies.

After playing the supporting actor in MCU for 12 long years, Don Cheadle is finally getting his own superhero movie. In a recent interview with GQ, the 58-year-old actor spoke about starring in Armor Wars, saying:

"In every successive film, he’s (James Rhodes) coming more and more out of Tony’s shadow and becoming his own person. But we still haven’t explored who he is and really dug into that yet. That’s what the movie is for."

A still of Don Cheadle as James Rhodes from Iron Man 2 (Image Via IMDb)

Ever since the news of Don Cheadle's Armor Wars was released by Marvel Studios, fans have been buzzing with excitement to see how the upcoming movie will unfold. As such, this article will discuss the news regarding Armor Wars that has been made public as of yet.

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MCU's upcoming movie Armor Wars will take place after the events of Secret Invasion

A poster for Armor Wars (Image Via IMDb)

Back in December 2020, the project was conceived as a TV series that was supposed to be released on Disney+. In September 2022, Marvel Studios announced that the project would be restructured as a movie that will have a theatrical release.

At the 2022 D23 Expo of Disney, it was disclosed that Armor Wars will take place right after the events of MCU's Secret Invasion, where Cheadle’s character, Rhodes, will be a supporting character. Thus, it will be quite interesting to see how things play out for James Rhodes in the two subsequent releases.

A still of Don Cheadle (Image Via IMDb)

Marvel Studios has never done a direct adaptation of a classic storyline of the comics, as the studio usually takes different elements from several comics to establish a refreshingly new story. The same can be witnessed in Armor Wars.

The comic was originally a seven-issue arc. Written by Bob Layton and David Michelinie, the comic story was published between late 1987 to early 1988. As per the comic, Tony Stark found out that his technology for Iron Man has come to the hands of similar heroes and villains, which ultimately leads to a destructive outcome.

It has also been reported that the movie adaptation is about to have a similar premise, except Tony Stark won’t be the main character this time. Moreover, Yassir Lester will be writing the script for the movie.

During the GQ interview, Don Cheadle opened up about joining the cast of Iron Man 2 and his six-movie deal with Marvel Studios. He said:

"I was at my kid’s laser tag birthday party,...They called me and said, ‘This is what’s happening and we’re giving you the offer. If you don’t say yes then we’re going to the next person. This is going to happen very fast. Why don’t you take an hour and decide if you want to do it.’ It was a six-movie deal! In an hour I have to decide?”

The actor further continued:

"So we played laser tag for two hours and I was talking to my wife and we thought about it and talked to my agent and tried to get as much information as we could."

Cheadle chose to accept the offer and the rest is history!

It's safe to say that after being part of the franchise for so long, Cheadle deserves his own MCU movie. However, no additional information on the release date, cast, or official synopsis of Armor Wars is currently available as of this writing.