Luke Cage Joins Ultimate Spider-Man Cast, Is Feature Film Far Behind?

"Ultimate Spider-Man," a new animated series coming to Disney XD next month, has picked up another Marvel powerhouse to the regular cast: Luke Cage.  The series centers around Peter Parker a year after he first becomes Spider-Man.  Parker has been battling bad guys, but he still doesn't know what the heck he's doing.  Nick Fury offers to help Peter, but only if Parker trains with other teenage superheroes—Nova, White Tiger, Iron Fist, and Power Man. And now it looks like Cage will help train the group as well. Writer and producer Brian Michael Bendis seems excited about tackling what appears to be a younger Luke Cage: "…It is fun to write him as a teenager, and I do sort of write him with the knowledge of the man he's going to become. That's kind of the way I wrote the Peter Parker in ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN [the comic series] for many years. You're writing the teenager who you know will one day become the Peter Parker we know and love. This is the Luke that will eventually become Luke Cage." In other words, inserting Cage into the series does two things here:1, it gives a significant audience an introduction to a great Marvel character. 2, it provides an origin story for Cage.  And you know what that means—familiarity. Marvel has kicked around the idea of bringing Luke Cage to the silver screen for years now.  One of the problems with that, however, is a majority of the public doesn't know who Cage is.  Now they will. So will Cage's participation in "Ultimate Spider-Man" result in a feature film for the big guy?  Let us know in what you think!