Report: Warners Wants a Booster Gold/Blue Beetle Team-Up Movie

Although most of their creations remain unexploited on the big screen, DC has just as deep a roster of cool characters as Marvel. Maybe deeper; the bizarre nooks and crannies of the DC Comics universe feature tons of fascinating heroes and villains. Like, for example crime-fighting buddies Booster Gold and Blue Beetle.

The original Blue Beetle dates back to the 1930s; the version that’s best known today, a brilliant inventor named Ted Kord, was created in the 1960s by Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko. In the 1980s, Ted’s Blue Beetle joined a new version of the Justice League alongside a relatively new hero named Booster Gold, a time-traveler from the future who uses advanced technology and a knowledge of the past (our present) to become a hero. Beetle and Booster’s partnership went well beyond the pages of Justice League of America, and continued off and on for decades.

Still, as beloved as the two characters remain in comic nerd circles, they’re a pretty obscure team. That’s why it’s kind of surprising to hear that Warner Bros. is interested in turning the colorful heroes into a movie; Heroic Hollywood says Warners wants Zak Penn (a co-writer on Avengers, X-Men: The Last Stand, and more) to write the screenplay for the film; The Tracking Board claims Arrow and The Flash’s Greg Berlanti will direct and produce the project, which would:

... team the two heroes together in what’s being pitched as a superhero buddy cop movie. Comedy is the emphasis here, which is a stark contrast to the other titles in DC’s Cinematic Universe, breaking the mold of the uber serious and grounded Man of Steel and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.

A buddy comedy would be a change of pace for Warners’ recent DC movies which have been serious, super serious, and serious. And while there are plenty of solo superheroes movies and a fair share of superhero team movies these days, partnerships (or buddy pictures) are a relatively untapped arena for the genre. That sounds like a smart way to mix things up too.

Still, I’m going to remain skeptical about this one. Not about Booster Gold and Blue Beetle being in development, but that we’ll ever see it. No one knows who Blue Beetle and Booster Gold are. Sure, Marvel’s shown that they can turn minor characters into hits like Guardians of the Galaxy and Ant-Man. But Booster Gold and Blue Beetle are like a niche on a niche on a niche. It just seems like a crazy long shot to me.