Through no fault of his own, Blue Beetle director Angel Manuel Soto has been left to pick up the pieces of the outgoing DCEU’s latest failure, with Jaime Reyes’ origin story becoming the superhero franchise’s third release this year alone to go down in a ball of box office flames.
It’s clear that the comic book saga is coming perilously close to running out of gas, creating the curious situation where Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom might genuinely be in danger of following suit despite its status as the highest-grossing adaptation in company history that netted well over a billion dollars.
Clearly immune to the perils of jumping onto a sinking ship, Soto confirmed in an interview with Collider that he’s still attached to the standalone Transformers feature first announced back in 2021, which presents its own set of dangers when the multi-billion dollar IP has just delivered its lowest-grossing installment for the third time in a row.
“I pitched them an idea. I read a script, I didn’t like it, and I pitched them a whole different idea, and they liked it, but then it was too late. So they told me, “Yeah, we cannot do your idea, but we like your idea, so we want you to write the idea and then direct it.” So, we’ve been in that process, but the writers’ strike happened. It will be different, it will be different.”
There’s a G.I. Joe crossover in the works, too, which makes hardly any sense from a fiscal perspective when Rise of the Beasts set a new Transformers low and the former has gone zero-for-three in its cinematic history so far, but perhaps some of that distinct Blue Beetle style and verve is exactly what the flagging property needs. Then again, a lot of people said the same thing when Creed II‘s Steven Caple Jr. signed on for the seventh chapter, and we all know how that turned out.