Xolo Maridueña wasn’t sure what would become of Blue Beetle after he debuted as the DC crime fighter in a 2023 blockbuster. That was, until DC boss James Gunn called him about coming back for the “Superman” sequel, “Man of Tomorrow.”
“I was in Japan with my friends; nobody knew anything,” Maridueña recalled on the red carpet at the Los Angeles premiere of “Practical Magic 2. “And I just see, like the Bat-phone, my phone rings [and it’s] James Gunn. All my friends look at me, and I had to leave the room. I came back, and I was like, ‘Off the record, don’t tell anyone, but we’re coming back,’ and I’m so excited for people to see where Blue Beetle ends up.”
Xolo Maridueña recalls the call he got from James Gunn asking him to return as Blue Beetle in "Superman: Man of Tomorrow." pic.twitter.com/cw1raLUl15
Maridueña explained that he was unsure he’d suit up as Blue Beetle again after his standalone feature. He added that he feels “humbled” by the opportunity to come back to the DCU.
“There’s never a guarantee with anything, bro,” he said. “I mean, you know this, stuff flips on a dime, and I know that it’s not always like a merit-based system. So there’s so much that’s out of my control, but I am just the most humbled of James and the greater DC team for folding us in, Indiana Jones style.”
“Man of Tomorrow,” the follow-up to 2025’s “Superman,” sees the titular DC icon team up with his arch-nemesis Lex Luthor to defeat an intergalactic super genius known as Brainiac. David Corenswet and Nicholas Hoult are set to return as Superman and Lex, respectively. Other cast members include Lars Eidinger, Aaron Pierre, Nathan Fillion, Milly Alcock, Isabela Merced and Skyler Gisondo.
Earlier in the interview, Maridueña said it was “surreal” to act alongside Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman for “Practical Magic 2.” He shared that after his first day on set, he was so excited that he wrote down every detail he could remember in his journal.
“The first day on set with the two of them, you’re having this third-person moment where they’re not only actors that you’ve witnessed your whole life, but also characters that are so electric,” Maridueña explained. “To be in the middle of this Venn diagram, my journal was full that night of all of the stuff, all of the little gems, all of the happy accidents, all of the morsels of knowledge that they give. They are outstanding class acts.”
“Practical Magic 2,” which hits theaters on Sept. 11, follows Sally, Gillian and their family of witches as they try to break a generational curse that stops them from falling in love. Other cast members include Stockard Channing, Dianne Wiest, Cassie Bradley, Joey King, Maisie Williams and Lee Pace. Susanne Bier directs, with a script by Akiva Goldsman, Georgia Pritchett and Kelly Marcel.
