When Angel Manuel Soto was called by Warner Bros. to make a DC film, Blue Beetle was not his first choice. In fact, he wanted to direct a film about a specific Batman villain.

Blue Beetle is a superhero film that revolves around the young titular DC hero. But Soto didn't always want to make a film about the good guy.

“I wanted to pitch ideas, and one of them was the Bane origin story,” Soto said to Den of Geek in a new interview. “I always thought that there was something interesting in exploring his reality and how a character like that comes to be.”

However, Soto then found that “the conversation was not about that.”

He was then offered a Blue Beetle film. “There’s this character that we’ve been developing for a couple of years. The Blue Beetle, a Latino superhero,” Soto recalled.

Angel Manuel Soto is a Puerto Rican filmmaker with a lot of TV credits under his belt. He has also directed three feature films including his DC film, and his last film, Charm City Kings, was released by the then-HBO Max (owned by Warner Bros.).

Blue Beetle is the penultimate film coming from the previous DC regime ahead of James Gunn and Peter Safran's takeover. Like Soto's Charm City Kings, Blue Beetle was initially intended to be an HBO Max release. However, it will be released theatrically and follows Jaime Reyes (Xolo Maridueña), a college student who encounters the Scarab. He faces off against Victoria Kord (Susan Sarandon). George Lopez, Adriana Barraza, Raoul Trujillo, and Damián Alcázar also star in the film.

Blue Beetle will be released on August 18.