Potential good news for the Georgia TV and film business: Marvel is reportedly planning to spend seven months next year shooting Don Cheadle’s “Armor Wars.”
Productionlist.com has “Armor Wars” now listed as an active project with scheduled production dates between Jan. 6 and Aug. 4, 2025.
It didn’t cite a location, but most Marvel movies have been shot out of Trilith Studios in Fayetteville.
Marvel first announced the possible movie in 2020, but it has yet to get off the ground.
Cheadle, if the movie happens, will play James “Rhodey” Rhodes, aka War Machine. According to a Marvel summary, Cheadle’s character is “Tony Stark’s worst fear coming true: what happens when his tech falls into the wrong hands. Stark discovers that someone has been stealing his Iron Man tech and selling it to supervillains. He decides he must do whatever it takes to reacquire — or destroy — the stolen tech.”
“Armor Wars” writers Yasser Lester recently told Movieweb that the project “goes away and comes back,” comparing it to another film that has been considered for Atlanta: a “Blade” reboot starring Mahershala Ali. “Armor Wars” was originally going to be a TV series but has been retooled as a movie.
“It’ll be a thing that happens every few months,” Lester said, “Then it won’t happen, then it’ll happen again.”
Cheadle told TVLine recently that it’s still alive as a project but wasn’t clear on its trajectory: “I’m not sure where anything is right now. I think things are going through a lot of changes, and we’ll see what happens.”
Marvel earlier this year said it’s cutting back on Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, which have not been as consistently successful as they were last decade. It has also committed to shooting more of these big-budget movies in the U.K., including the next “Avengers” film.
Two Marvel movies previously produced largely in Georgia are on the theater slate next year: “Thunderbolts” and “Captain America: Brave New World.”
Cheadle shot Peacock’s limited series “Fight Night” last year out of Assembly Studios in Doraville, playing a real-life police officer who helps solve a 1970 robbery after a Muhammad Ali fight. The eight episodes are available on Peacock.
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