AINEWS
Jason Momoa Is Already Making the Case for a Lobo Solo Movie
On the Supergirl press tour, the actor is borrowing his own Aquaman arc as the proof of concept and putting the outcome on the fans.
On the Supergirl press tour, the actor is borrowing his own Aquaman arc as the proof of concept and putting the outcome on the fans.
Jason Momoa is using the Supergirl press tour to run a public campaign for a Lobo solo film, and he is reaching for the most flattering precedent in his own career to make the case.
In an io9 interview published alongside the Supergirl promotional cycle, Momoa confirmed he is playing Lobo, the intergalactic bounty hunter, in the upcoming film. The character arrives as a supporting piece of a larger DC ensemble rather than headlining his own vehicle, a notable shift for a property that has cycled through standalone-attempt rumors for years without producing a movie. That positioning is the basis for the case Momoa is now building in public.
Momoa's pitch borrows directly from his own Aquaman arc. He introduced the character in Batman v Superman, carried the role through Justice League, and then anchored a solo film that, as Momoa noted in the same conversation, grossed over $1 billion worldwide. That trajectory is the template he is offering DC: a slow build through supporting appearances, audience familiarity, and only then a headlining launch. Momoa told io9 he expects a similar arc, saying, "I think, just like Aquaman, it'll work out that way." The rest of his thought was cut off in the published excerpt, but the shape of the argument was clear.
He is also doing something subtler. Momoa explicitly contrasts the audience familiarity of Lobo, a recognizable cult figure, with the harder sell that Aquaman was before his solo film. The framing is strategic. If Aquaman, a character many outside comics treated as a punchline, could carry a billion-dollar picture on the strength of exposure in larger ensemble films, then a property with a louder built-in fanbase arguably has a shorter road. Momoa is making that math visible to the studio, to the audience, and to anyone reading the interview as a signal rather than a recap.
That distinction is the part worth taking seriously. The interview is tied to a Warner Bros. release window, which gives Momoa a captive promotional megaphone, and he is using it to manufacture a demand signal that studios often treat as organic greenlight justification. io9 itself framed the comparison as a "floating" idea rather than a confirmed DC roadmap. Momoa is pitching, not announcing. He is also conditioning the outcome on fan response, which is the language actors use when they want the audience to do the heavy lifting a greenlight committee usually does.
The strategy has a long history in Hollywood and a mixed record. Star vehicles have launched on less than an actor's public campaign. They have also died in development when the campaign outran the studio's appetite. What makes Momoa's version notable is the specificity of the precedent. He is not asking DC to take a leap of faith on a stranger. He is asking the studio to repeat a formula that already produced their biggest surprise hit of the last decade, with a property that arrives with a louder starting volume. That is a tighter pitch than most, and one a studio is more likely to hear.
A separate piece of texture from the same interview shows up around his comments on the new Fast and Furious film, where Momoa expressed frustration with the pace of production. It is a different grievance, but it rhymes. Momoa is increasingly willing to use press time to be visibly impatient with the speed at which projects he cares about move. The pattern is the same: an actor using the platform a tour provides to make sure the right people understand what he wants next.
Whether DC reads the signal is a separate question. The new DC universe under James Gunn is in the middle of recalibrating its slate, and the kind of slow-burn character arc Momoa is describing depends on a coherent long-range plan the studio has not fully shown. What Momoa is doing, deliberately or not, is inserting himself into that planning conversation while the cameras are still running. If a Lobo solo film ever gets made, the marketing for it will almost certainly include a clip from this interview. He knows that. The campaign has already started.