‘Superman’: Frank Grillo to Appear as Rick Flag Sr.!!

Frank Grillo won’t just be voicing hard-bitten soldier Rick Flag in the upcoming DC Comics animated series Creature Commandos: he’ll play the character in live action, too. We already knew that he’d be part of the upcoming second season of Peacemaker, but now we know he’ll be hitting the big screen. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, James Gunn confirmed that Flag will turn up in next year’s Superman film.

In the interview, Gunn talked about the different aspects of Flag that would be seen across the three projects, which brings to mind the presence of Samuel L. Jackson‘s Nick Fury as the connective tissue that bridged the early films of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. As Gunn explains, “This isn’t just a good guy, not at all. We see all different sides of his character. He is morally a complex human being.” Certainly, his role in leading the misfit monsters of the Creature Commandos and encountering R-rated super-solder Peacemaker would bring out different shades of the character than a meeting with Superman, who is sometimes derisively dismissed as a big blue Boy Scout. Gunn is certain that action veteran Grillo is up to the task: “The actors have to be able to work within different genres, and that’s something Frank’s really been good at. He’s been really good at the comedy of Creature Commandos and also really good at the drama of Peacemaker and Superman.”

Who Is Rick Flag?

Created by writer John Ostrander and artist Luke McDonnell in 1987’s Secret Origins #14, Rick Flag Sr. was a decorated World War II veteran who commanded a daredevil brigade known as the Suicide Squadron. After the war, the unit became one dedicated to battling superhuman and paranormal threats, and he was eventually killed battling the War Wheel, a Nazi superweapon. His son, Rick Flag Jr., went on to lead the modern incarnation of the Suicide Squad, a task force composed of super villains conscripted into government service. The Jr. incarnation of the character was played by Joel Kinnaman in Suicide Squad and its Gunn-helmed sequel, The Suicide Squad, in which the character was killed. As Gunn‘s The Suicide Squad will have some connections to the new cinematic DC Universe Gunn is constructing, it’s unclear whether that Rick Flag Jr. will be connected to Grillo‘s Rick Flag Sr.

Superman will feature a veritable Who’s Who of DC Comics characters. In addition to David Corenswet‘s Superman, Rachel Brosnahan‘s Lois Lane, Nicholas Hoult‘s Lex Luthor, and Grillo’s Rick Flag Sr., it will also feature Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced), Mister Terrific (Edi Gathegi), Metamorpho (Anthony Carrigan), the Engineer (María Gabriela de Faría), Maxwell Lord (Sean Gunn), Supergirl (Milly Alcock), and Green Lantern Guy Gardner (Nathan Fillion). Superman will be released on July 25, 2025, but you can get a first glimpse of Grillo’s Rick Flag Sr. when Creature Commandos premieres on Max on December 5, 2024. Stay tuned to Collider for future updates.