Blue Beetle: Xolo Maridueña Leaps Right Off the Page in New Featurette (Exclusive)

The fan-favorite superhero Blue Beetle is set to make his big-screen debut this month, with Xolo Maridueña channeling the history of Jaime Reyes to fully embody the character in Blue Beetle. The upcoming adventure isn't a direct adaptation of a specific comic, but like all of the best origin stories, the experience will honor a number of significant elements from the character's storied history to make for a thrilling debut. In an exclusive featurette for the film, Maridueña reads straight from the pages of Blue Beetle to tease the outlook of his on-screen character's persona. Check out the exclusive featurette above before Blue Beetle lands in theaters on August 18th.

Even though the movie isn't a direct adaptation, director Angel Manuel Soto recently recalled how heavily the source material influenced the big-screen outing.

"We knew that that stuff existed. So we didn't want to use it as a reference, we wanted to actually use as much as we could from the comic to sort of express what we could express in the film and in the comics and in the animation," Soto previously shared with ComicBook.com. "Blue Beetle, he has a mouth, we didn't do the mouth ... Maybe somebody finds a way of including the mouth into the Blue Beetle suit, but we didn't. We felt like, 'You know what, in the comic, he has eye responses, so we can show emotion through his eyes. So we can definitely move that and, it's not a helmet per se. It's a suit, it envelops the mask.' So if you thought it should have a little bit of jaw movement because it's not a helmet, so we were able to have fun and when we try to do our version of what's in the comics."

From Warner Bros. Pictures comes Blue Beetle, which arrives in theaters on August 18th, marking the DC superhero's first time on the big screen. The film, directed by Angel Manuel Soto, stars Xolo Maridueña in the title role as well as his alter ego, Jaime Reyes. Recent college grad Jaime Reyes returns home full of aspirations for his future, only to find that home is not quite as he left it. As he searches to find his purpose in the world, fate intervenes when Jaime unexpectedly finds himself in possession of an ancient relic of alien biotechnology: the Scarab. When the Scarab suddenly chooses Jaime to be its symbiotic host, he is bestowed with an incredible suit of armor capable of extraordinary and unpredictable powers, forever changing his destiny as he becomes the superhero Blue Beetle.

Starring alongside Maridueña are Adriana Barraza, Damían Alcázar, Elpidia Carrillo, Bruna Marquezine, Raoul Max Trujillo, with Oscar winner Susan Sarandon, and George Lopez (the "Rio and "Smurf" franchises). The film also stars Belissa Escobedo and Harvey Guillén. Soto directs from a screenplay by Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer, based on characters from DC. John Rickard and Zev Foreman are producing, with Walter Hamada, Galen Vaisman and Garrett Grant serving as executive producers.

Are you looking forward to the movie? Let us know in the comments!