Universal Studios is hard at working developing their first shared cinematic universe with their classic monsters like Dracula, Wolfman and The Mummy. But one thing on every Marvel fans minds was the news that Universal Studios actually owned the rights to the Atlantian king Namor and not Marvel Studios. This information came from Kevin Feige himself last year in an off handed remark.
Now this passed week while speaking with The Hollywood Reporter Universal Studios executive Donna Langley revealed that while they are no focusing on their monster cinematic universe the studio actually doesn't own any "capes" i.e superheros:
We don’t have any capes [in our film library]. But what we do have is an incredible legacy and history with the monster characters. We’ve tried over the years to make monster movies — unsuccessfully, actually. So, we took a good, hard look at it, and we settled upon an idea, which is to take it out of the horror genre, put it more in the action-adventure genre and make it present day, bringing these incredibly rich and complex characters into present day and reimagine them and reintroduce them to a contemporary audience.Now we may be reading to much into this but several months ago Borys Kit of The Hollywood Reporter also mentioned that Marvel Studios had gotten back the rights to Namor but this of course was never confirmed.
The reason for the massive grey area revolving around the character is because back before Disney bought Marvel Studios it was Universal who helped co-produce and co-own The Hulk in Edward Norton's The Incredible Hulk. So many assumed that it's possible that Universal may be willing to co-own Namor as well if Marvel wanted to use him. But now if this information includes Namor that Universal really doesn't own him at all!
Now while his character isn't mandatory for the Civil War storyline gonna be seen on the big screen in Captain America 3. He does play a large role in the comic and seeing him first appear in that setting would make the most sense for just an introduction. But of course that is just wishful thinking. If DC Comics is brave enough to bring Aquaman to the big screen it's about time Marvel returns with Namor...
