In a rare move, DC's Blue Beetle movie is skipping HBO Max and going straight to theaters
The superhero film starring Xolo Maridueña will now open in theaters in 2023
Just a day after Warner Bros. once again demanded that everyone stop rolling their eyes and snickering when it says that it’s really and truly not going to keep releasing all of its movies on HBO Max on the same day they come out in movie theaters, the studio has actually made a surprising shift: DC superhero movie Blue Beetle is actually losing its HBO Max release in favor of a traditional theatrical rollout. It’s getting called up to the big-screen big leagues!
Blue Beetle is being directed by Angel Manuel Soto and will star Cobra Kai’s Xolo Maridueña as Jaime Reyes, a regular kid who finds a beetle-like alien artifact that bonds with him, Venom-style, and gives him a vaguely beetle-like suit of alien armor. Also the armor is blue and Blue Beetle was the name of an old comic book hero owned by a company that DC eventually bought, so Jaime Reyes becomes the Blue Beetle.
DC and Warner Bros. have been trying to crack a Blue Beetle movie for years, with the project first being announced in 2018 before Soto signed on earlier this year. Rather than going straight to HBO Max, Blue Beetle will now open in theaters on August 18, 2023. Meanwhile, the HBO Max Batgirl movie with Leslie Grace from In The Heights is apparently still going to land on HBO Max.
That one is being directed by Bad Boys For Life directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, who previously made one of the biggest films of last year (with an asterisk, because movie theaters shut down shortly after it came out), so maybe they could make a few phone calls and get Batgirl in theaters as well. Then maybe Christopher Nolan will come back to Warner and everyone can be friends again.