‘Ironheart’: Alden Ehrenreich Joins MCU Series On Disney+
‘Solo’ star Alden Ehrenreich is returning to the Disney-fold, but not as Han Solo (unforuntely). He will, however, appear in the upcoming Marvel MCU series ‘Ironheart‘ alongside Dominique Thorne.
Thorne (‘If Beale Street Could Talk’, ‘Judas and the Black Messiah’) plays Riri Williams, a genius young inventor who creates the most advanced suit of armour since Iron Man. As is typical with these projects, we don’t know exactly who Ehrenreich will be playing in the series.
This will be the second Disney outing for Ehrenreich, who starred in the Star Wars ‘Solo’ movie in the title role. Unfortunately, the film was plagued with production issues, and ended up not doing as well as the Disney overlords had hoped… More frustratingly, the takeaway Lucasfilm boss Kathleen Kennedy took from the “failure” was that they shouldn’t recast any iconic legacy characters. That led to many fans responding by defending Ehrenreich’s performance as the young Han Solo as being the one thing that really did work in the movie. It is also somewhat ironic given they have recently released ‘Obi Wan’ starring Ewan McGregor, which was also a younger recast of an “iconic legacy character”.
More recently, Ehrenreich has been starring in Christopher Nolan’s ‘Oppenheimer’ opposite fellow MCU star Robert Downey Jr., Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt and Matt Damon. Prior to that he led the cast of Peacock series ‘Brave New World’.
The character of Riri Williams was first introduced in the comic books back in 2016 by writers Brian Michael Bendis, and artist Mike Deodato. A genius 15-year-old engineering student, she attends MIT and designs a suit of armour similar to Iron Man by using material stolen from campus. Tony Stark (who is still alive in the comic book at this point) hears of her accomplishment and gives her his seal of approval after she prevents two inmates from escaping the New Mexico State Penitentiary.
Chinaka Hodge was recently tapped to lead the writer’s room for the series. Her previous work includes TNT’s superb ‘Snowpiercer’ and the Apple TV+ anthology ‘Amazing Stories’. She is a poet, educator, playwright and screenwriter, whose poetry and work with youth organisations have garnered her national recognition in the USA. She is also a founding member of the hip hop triumvirate The Getback, along with ‘Snowpiercer’ & ‘Hamilton’ star Daveed Diggs, and actor/writer Rafael Casal (‘The Good Lord Bird’, ‘Blindspotting’).
We don’t know exactly when ‘Ironheart‘ will land on Disney+, but if you want to keep track of this or any other show, you can add them via our Never Miss system, and you’ll be notified when they get a UK premiere date.
