Daniel Craig Is No Longer DC Studios’s Sgt. Rock
The reteam with 'Queer' director Luca Guadagnino is not happening after all
DC Studios’s Sgt. Rock movie, despite having no official announcement, let alone release date, was looking very promising with not only Academy Award-winning director Luca Guadagnino attached but his Queer star Daniel Craig and screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes when it was first reported in November. This could have built up some impressive speed into production, or even just onto the film slate, for what’s going to be set in the new DC Universe. Unfortunately, the reunion is left incomplete as Craig has either passed on or dropped out of the role.
Being a film that the studio has yet to announced, one could only imagine that was probably at the forefront of reasons why they were unable to be reached for comment. It also means the extent of the setback is as unclear as the reason behind Craig’s departure. This marks the latest failure to put a face to the character, as attempts to bring the character to the big screen date back to the 1980s with different writers and drafts. A build like his leads to names like Arnold Schwarzenegger being attached and Bruce Willis in talks later on. The late 2000s brought potential directors like Guy Ritchie and Francis Lawrence around.
Sgt. Franklin John Rock was created by Robert Kanigher and Joe Kubert, debuting in Our Army at War #82 in 1959. The character is known as a member of the Easy Company, a unit that fought in the European Theatre during World War II. The character spawned his own comic series in 1977 which ran until July 1988. He can shoot down German plans with a single submachine gun, toss grenades with great accuracy, and utilize a “Combat Antenna” able to detect an incoming enemy siege. He is considered a great street fighter when not armed, and can survive gunshots.
While big screen and live-action adaptations are impossible to come by on anything more than an implication, the character did fight alongside his men and the Justice League against Vandal Savage, in the animated series’s season 1 finale “The Savage Time”, where he was voiced by Steve Dryer. His most recent adaptation of substance did end up being on Creature Commandos, in flashbacks in the GI Robot focus episode "Cheers to the Tin Man", where he’s voiced by Homeland star Maury Sterling. One can probably assume that creator and universe architect James Gunn was loose about minor appearances of potential starring characters and not making future filmmakers beholden to aspects of the character like voice and likeness precedents that those minor appearances would purportedly set before the major jump is made.
While it is again unclear whether this means Guadagnino’s American Psycho remake for Lionsgate has once again his next movie to film, he and Craig each have their own share of projects releasing this year. Guadagnino has the Amazon thriller After the Hunt, starring Julia Roberts, Ayo Edebiri and Andrew Garfield opening October 10, while Craig has his third Knives Out mystery as Benoit Blanc, Wake Up Dead Man, releasing this fall on Netflix. As for the DC Universe film slate, it did formally receive its third scheduled film, with Clayface, written by Mike Flanagan becoming the first that wasn’t in the original five announced to be dated, getting September 11, 2026.
Sources: Nexus Point News, Deadline