Warner Bros. and DC’s first trailer for Blue Beetle has arrived.
The trailer, released Monday, introduces audiences to Jaime Reyes, a recent college graduate who gains superpower armor after an encounter with an alien scarab and must come to terms with his newfound abilities, while uncovering the reason the scarab was sent to Earth. In the comics, the character lives in El Paso, Texas, but in the movie he will inhabit Palmera City, a location created for the project.
Cobra Kai actor Xolo Maridueña stars in the feature from director Angel Manuel Soto and writer Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer. This marks DC’s first film to center on a Latino superhero, with Jaime Reyes’ family a key part of the movie.
“The family aspect to this movie and to the character is inherent to the comics and so special,” Maridueña told The Hollywood Reporter last year. “The family we’ve been able to create in the movie — the mom, dad, uncle, sister, grandmother — I feel like that aspect of being a superhero hasn’t been tapped into a ton.”
Blue Beetle is also one of three DC films still to be released that were made before James Gunn and Peter Safran were hired to run DC Studios. The Flash (June 16) and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (Dec. 25) are the others. The fate of those franchises are uncertain, as Gunn and Safran are planning their own DC slate. The executives have said there is nothing that precludes any of those actors or characters continuing on, though their initial plans did not include features known to star those characters.
Blue Beetle was initially envisioned as an HBO Max film, but Warner Bros. upgraded it to theatrical in late 2021. It is slated for Aug. 18.
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A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Blue Beetle is set in Texas. It’s set in Palmera City.
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