Here’s a rumor which we’ve heard before, but might actually be true this time. War Machine may get a solo movie. You know War Machine. War Machine is what Tony Stark’s buddy James “Rhodey” Rhodes calls himself whenever he puts on one of Tony’s Iron Man suits, weaponizes it, and paints it black. He got his first shot at fighting bad guys alongside Stark Iron Man 2 and now word from Dustin Rowles of Pajiba is that Hollywood might be interesting in letting him do it on his own.
They say there’s a pitch out to writers, which means they have an idea and they’re looking for someone to write the War Machine script. Of course odds are even if this is true, it’ll be denied. It’s far too early in the process for any respectable studio employee to confirm something like this rumor. The last official word on the subject came from Don Cheadle who, before Iron Man 2 was released, said that he didn’t think it was even a possibility.
Does anyone even want a War Machine movie? So far in two Iron Man movies played by two different actors, the character of Rhodey has been at best, aggressively mediocre. He’s hardly the kind of personality that seems like it could fill up an entire film. Besides, isn’t he basically just Iron Man except if Iron Man was a political puppet of the US government? Do we really need to see that? We already have Iron Man, and even that is seeming less and less interesting. Iron Man 2 did well, but it didn’t exactly break any box office records. Giving War Machine his own movie seems unnecessary.
The lack of interest in such a project may not matter, however. Disney recently bought the distribution rights for the entire Iron Man universe from Paramount. If the rumor’s true, that could explain why there’s suddenly movement to give War Machine his own movie, when everyone involved had previously been pretty disinterested in the notion.
