A long time ago, in a studio far, far away, it was decided that Armor Wars would make a great series for Disney+, but that’s not the case any more.

The series about James “Rhodey” Rhodes, aka War Machine, played by Don Cheadle in numerous films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, is being reimagined as a feature film, sources at Marvel Studios have indicated. It’s being reported that studio heads realized the story wouldn’t work as well as a series.

Yassir Lister, hired last year to write the series, will remain to pen the movie script. No director is yet attached, and there’s no release date either, though it’s a safe bet that the title will be pushed further down on the development slate, just as no premiere date for the series had been announced.

Don Cheadle is still attached to the project, but he will reprise the character in 2023 in the MCU series Secret Invasion, which will also feature Samuel L. Jackson and Ben Mendelsohn.

Little is known about the storyline for Armor Wars. Earlier this month at Disney’s D23 Expo, Cheadle joined Marvel Studios producer and president Kevin Feige on stage and they showed the logo for what was then touted as being a six-episode event series. 

The title Armor Wars was an arc in the Iron Man comics in 1987 and 1988. Written by David Michelinie and Bob Layton with art by Mark Bright, it showed what would happen if the highly advanced technology of Iron Man fell into the wrong hands. The live-action series was seen as a way to showcase multiple types of armor.

Marvel has previously pulled this switcheroo, but in the opposite direction, when it converted planned feature Hawkeye into a series.