Despite the Blue Beetle’s poor performance at the box office last year, the bug will carry on as part of the new cinematic DC Universe under James Gunn, and his next incarnation is now in development.
Deadline is reporting that Jaime Reyes’s adventures are to continue in animated form with a new series. Springing from the movie’s continuity, it has the director Angel Manuel Soto and the writer Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer tapped to executive produce.
Taking over creative duties are Miguel Puga as showrunner and Cristian Martinez as the writer. Puga is known for his work on The Casagrandes, The Looney Tunes Show, Futurama, and The Fairly Oddparents. Martinez is known for The Fosters and Women of the Children.
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While it seems like a given that Xolo Maridueña would be back as Jaime Reyes, and Gunn has said in the past this was the case, his return is not official. If we go by the logic of Creature Commandos, it makes sense for Maridueña to be the one to play Reyes in animation since he already has in live-action.
“The animated series will build on the movie, developed under DC Studios’ previous regime, but will divert from telling the same story,” says the Deadline report. “Instead, the show will create its own story which, in success, could potentially lead to a return to the big screen for the giant blue bug portrayed by Xolo Maridueña.”
The series telling its own story could mean that the story ignores any events from the film that Puga and Martinez or DC Studios consider inconvenient to the direction they want to take.
Blue Beetle canonized the legacy of the character that began with Dan Garrett and was taken up by Ted Kord. The ending teased that Ted was still alive, so they could go down that rabbit hole. Since it hasn’t been explored thoroughly, that’d be a new story to tell.
However, they could also keep things simpler and ignore most of the main cast. If that entails forgetting Susan Sarandon as Victoria Kord, that would be fine.