Commander James Bond? Yes. Detective Benoit Blanc? Also yes. But Sgt. Rock? No. Daniel Craig has backed out of Luca Guadagnino’s Sgt. Rock, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The DC Studios joint would have been a re-team between Craig and Guadagnino, post-Queer, as well as a threepeat for Guadagnino and Challengers/Queer screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes.
Rumors that Guadagnino was helming a superhero film for Warner Bros. started back in September. This is the first news we’ve had on which supe he’s adapting. Sgt. Rock is a World War II character, created by Robert Kanigher and Joe Kubert in 1959. The character doesn’t really have superpowers, unless you count his “Combat Antenna” which allows him to sense oncoming danger, à la Spidey-sense. He’s namechecked in a XTC song, and has appeared in the DCAU occasionally, but big screen adaptations have been stuck in development hell for decades. Both Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis were attached to star as the NCO. Will Luca’s Sgt. Rock meet the same fate? We’ll have to wait and see.
