Does everyone remember the now infamous Disney Investors Day in 2020 when the House of The Mouse tried to get investors and Wall Street not to panic so they announced a sh*t ton of projects? As we know now from various reports and books—particularly Joanna Robinson’s excellent “MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios” book—Marvel (and Lucasfilm) weren’t particularly ready to announce most of these projects, but Bob Iger essentially forced them to prematurely announce a lot of projects. In the case of Lucasfilm, very few of the announcements came to pass, but Marvel managed to make every project they announced save one: “Armor Wars,” starring Don Cheadle as James Rhodes, aka War Machine, who faces Tony Stark’s worst fears about his tech falling into the wrong hands.
READ MORE: Don Cheadle Doesn’t Know What’s Going On With ‘Armor Wars’: “I’m Not Sure Where Anything Is Right Now”
Initially announced as a series, then Marvel producer Nate Moore revealed that it was too costly as a show and was refashioned into a movie. But nothing ever came of it. (Though apparently, it did come semi-close to shooting a few years back, as a U.K. source told us that Marvel had been booking people to work on the project and asking them to hold windows when they were available. Circa 2021, Cheadle said it was shooting in a few months).
Now, Nate Moore, who is actually leaving Marvel soon to work on his own, promoting “Captain America: Brave New World,” which he did produce said he’s no longer working on the project—makes sense, he’s leaving—and that it might be in some kind of limbo.
His comments are initially hard to parse at first, but the gist of it is that “Armor Wars” isn’t canceled per se, but it doesn’t sound like it’s moving forward any time soon either. And he mentions quality control more than once which suggests the “Armor Wars” scripts just weren’t up to par.
“You know, that’s not my project, to be honest,” Moore told Collider this week. “But, I do know, as Marvel [Studios] continues to go through this phase, we want to make sure whatever we’re making is awesome.”
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“So that means we had to slow down some things that were on the front burner,” he clarified. “It doesn’t mean we’ll never make it, but it does mean we just have to be a little bit more considered so that every time out, audiences are guaranteed quality.”
To me, that reads like maybe, but the script needs work and not now.
“Armor Wars” was set to explore Stark Industries tech falling into the wrong hands and Cheadle’s War Machine/James Rhoades trying to investigate and stop it.
The movie was supposed based on the “Iron Man” comic book storyline of the same name. No director was ever officially attached to the project, but Damian Marcano (“Snowfall,” “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty”) was once listed as a director on IMDB, presumably from when the project was a TV series.
“Armor Wars” writer Yassir Lester told MovieWeb back in October 2024 that he wasn’t sure if the movie would be made or not.
“In the same way ‘Blade’ goes away and comes back the next day, ‘Armor Wars’ is — it’ll be a thing that happens every few months, then it won’t happen, then it’ll happen again.”
Cheadle also mentioned his uncertainty about the project last year. Reading between the lines, it’s pretty clear “Armor Wars” is not getting made any time soon, but if it did, it would surely address some of the major revelations of Rhodey’s character found in “Secret Invasion,” aka the real Rhodey had been locked away for years in a hibernative sleep while a Skrull had posed as him for years.
How do you re-introduce that character again without addressing the trauma of all that? Good question. Until then, I would put a pin in “Armor Wars” for now and remain very, very patient.