‘We want to let it be able to tell us its story’: The director of the lowest-earning entry in a dying franchise admirably entertains sequel ideas

Movies that don’t make money are very rarely afforded sequels, so by that logic, you wouldn’t expect the lowest-grossing entry in a shared universe that spanned a decade and 15 features to be getting a follow-up, but Blue Beetle director Angel Manuel Soto is hoping that won’t be the case.

The good news is that Xolo Maridueña’s Jaime Reyes has been confirmed to be one of the select few characters carried over to James Gunn and Peter Safran’ DCU, but it remains entirely up for debate as to whether or not that stay of execution will extend to a second standalone adventure.

After all, despite Blue Beetle being one of the better movies the dying DCEU has put out in the last few years, it was still the worst box office performer of an altogether dire 2023 for the flagging saga, with a running total of $129 million against a reported budget of $104 million putting it bottom of the all-time pile, too.

Undeterred, though, Soto outlined to ComicBook that a tease of a much larger plane of existence hinted at in the opener could be explored in future stories, if he’s granted the chance to tell them.

“We did an impressionistic approach in the title sequence but for us, we want to let Khaji be able to tell us its story and to show us, at the end of the day, The Reach. Having that moment of Jaimie helping Khaji Da take over The Reach and liberate all the scarabs from the Imperial yoke from that colonizing race, it’s also the Latino story.”

There’s a lot of folks out there who’d kill for a Blue Beetle 2 – and that may yet extend to Gunn and Safran – but at the end of the day, the financial ball is in Warner Bros.’ court, and a studio pinching pennies everywhere it can may not be keen on the idea of funneling money into the sequel to a bomb.