It’s a brand new year and the Marvel Studios rumor mill has started churning out brand new reports of intrigue. When Marvel Studios first started this crazy plan to bring all their biggest superheroes together under one cinematic universe, many of the movie rights to their top tier characters were spread between multiple studios. X-Men, Fantastic Four, Daredevil, and Ghost Rider were housed at Fox. Spider-Man was webbed up at Sony. Universal had the Hulk and Namor. After years of legal negotiations and acquisitions, Marvel Studios has returned most of their characters to the House of Ideas – at least for now – but Hulk and Namor were still left out; their stand-alone movie rights remained tangled up at Universal. However, that all might have changed very recently.
Unconfirmed reports out of the website MCU Cosmic say that the stand-alone film rights to Marvel mainstays Hulk and Namor the Submariner have finally come home to Marvel Studios. If true, this means that the Hulk could decisively appear in his own movies again, instead of just guest-star spots in Avengers and Thor flicks. The fact that She-Hulk is getting her own Disney+ TV series might serve as a clue to the gamma-irradiated family’s film foundations.
There’s also been a fair amount of speculation that Prince Namor would be appearing as the main antagonist in Black Panther 2, taking inspiration from the recent comicbook storyline where the underwater kingdom of Atlantis invaded Wakanda. The aquatic anti-hero has been hinted at multiple times in the MCU, including a possible location for Atlantis on a S.H.I.E.L.D. map in Iron Man 2 and the mention of Wakanda investigating underwater earthquakes in Avengers: Endgame.
Continuing down the rumor route, MCU Cosmic is also reporting that the recently canceled Marvel Netflix TV characters are being resurrected in some capacity by Marvel Studios earlier than anticipated. Originally, it was revealed that Marvel’s deal with Netflix for The Defenders held that once the shows were canceled, Marvel had to wait two full years before using the characters again. Well, if the report is to be believed than new negotiations might have changed things.
According to MCU Cosmic, Marvel Studios is already in various stages of development with Marvel Netflix characters including Daredevil, The Punisher, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist. The website speculates that since Daredevil and Punisher are the most recognizable of the bunch, that we should expect Marvel to lead with re-introducing those two to the Marvel Cinematic Universe first. There is no information on whether the continuity or casts from the Netflix shows will remain intact or be rebooted for a new iteration. So, it looks like we’ll all just have to wait to see if any of these anticipated reports ring true!