Charm City Kings' Angel Manuel Soto to direct DC's Blue Beetle movie
It only took two years and some months, but DC and Warner Bros. are finally moving forward with that Blue Beetle movie we heard about at the end of 2018. At the time, we knew that Garth Dunnet-Alocer, who previously worked on the upcoming Scarface remake and Gina Rodriguez’s Miss Bala, had written a script, but now we also know that Charm City Kings director Angel Manuel Soto has stepped in to direct the film. That’s according to The Wrap, which notes that this will be the WB’s first superhero movie staring a Latino character, with Soto saying in a statement that it’s “an honor” to be the one to direct this film.
For those who don’t know the Blue Beetle—or who haven’t read comics in a few decades and only know a different Blue Beetle—this one is only slightly complicated. 80 years ago there was a comic book about a guy named Dan Garrett who fought crime as the Blue Beetle, and a few decades later, Charlton Comics got the rights to the character and (with the help of Steve Ditko) created a second Blue Beetle named Ted Kord. That one was fairly explicitly a Batman knockoff, with Nite Owl in Watchmen being a parody of him rather than the Dark Knight (they’re all Charlton characters with different names in that book), but a few decades after that DC swallowed up Charlton Comics and integrated some of its character into the DC Universe.
The Ted Kord Blue Beetle was around for years, serving as a memorable part of the Justice League International team alongside none other than Batman, but in 2006 DC introduce a new and completely unrelated Blue Beetle named Jaime Reyes who got his power from a blue alien/magic scarab that attached itself to his spine. He’s like Venom crossed with Cyborg, and he’s very cool.