‘Blue Beetle’ Trailer: ‘Cobra Kai’s’ Xolo Maridueña Fights Susan Sarandon in New DC Film

Wilson Chapman
·2-min read

After a series of DC films with messy rollouts and behind-the-scenes drama — see “Black Adam,” “Shazam: Fury of the Gods,” and especially June’s “The Flash” — August will see the studio introducing a scrappy new superhero (hopefully) worth rooting for. He’s Blue Beetle (AKA Jaime Reyes), played in the big summer blockbuster by Xolo Maridueña, best known for Netflix’s “Cobra Kai.”

The character of Blue Beetle was first created by Keith Giffen, John Rogers, and Cully Hamner for the 2006 event “Infinite Crisis.” An ordinary teenager from a Mexican-American family, Jaime’s life unexpectedly changes when his friend Jenny (Bruna Marquezine) entrusts him with a strange extraterrestrial mechanical scarab. The device grafts onto him, giving him the ability to access a powerful exoskeleton capable of fighting crime.

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But his possession of the scarab also puts him in direct conflict with Susan Sarandon’s Victoria Kord, an executive (and in the comics at least, the sister of Ted Kord, Jaime’s immediate predecessor as Blue Beetle) who will stop at nothing to get it back.

George Lopez, Bruna Marquezine, Belissa Escobedo, Adriana Barraza, Elpidia Carrillo, and Damián Alcázar play Jaime’s family and friends in the film, while Raoul Trujillo faces off against Maridueña as Carapax the Indestructible Man. “What We Do in the Shadows” star Harvey Guillén has also been cast in the film, but his role remains under wraps. Angel Manuel Soto directs the film from a script by Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer.

“Blue Beetle” was initially announced in 2021 as an exclusive streaming film for HBO Max. Later that year, Warner Bros. elected to give the film a theatrical release instead — a decision that might have inadvertently spared the project the fate of getting permanently shelved like  “Batgirl,” another DC film intended for HBO Max.

That said, the future of Maridueña and Jaime Reyes on film is unclear. “Blue Beetle” is one of the final films in the “DC Extended Universe” established by 2013’s “Man of Steel,” to be greenlit and produced before James Gunn and Peter Safran took over as co-CEOs of DC Studios. The very last, Jason Momoa’s “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom,” comes out this Christmas.

After that, Gunn and Safran will begin their soft reboot of DC films with 2025’s “Superman: Legacy.” A few prior castings, like Viola Davis as Amanda Waller, will make the transition to this new continuity, but no future projects involving Blue Beetle have been announced.

“Blue Beetle” hits theaters August 18. Watch the full trailer for the film below.

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