Perhaps the great revelation of the surprising —especially if we take into account the average quality of Phase 4 of the MCU— ‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’ has been the Namor of Tenoch Vegetable garden; a charismatic antagonist and with a more careful character treatment than usual that has left a good part of the marvelite fandom crying out for his own solo movie.
Unfortunately, it seems that it will be very difficult, if not impossible, for us to enjoy an adventure focused solely and exclusively on the first mutant from the House of Ideas, and the reason is none other than the rights dance on the character. A circumstance similar to that which has prevented us from seeing a Mark Ruffalo Hulk film.
It’s better just…
In the framework of a conversation with The Wrap, Nate Moore, producer of ‘Wakanda Forever’, has confirmed that Namor may return, but not in what is known in the US as a “standalone film”. In addition to comparing it with the case of the Hulk and confirming that the Scourge of the 7 seas is a character “borrowed” by Universal Pictures.
According to the agreement between Marvel and Universal, Namor may only appear in promotional material only as long as it’s in poster series, and he can never have his solo movie in the MCU. Moore has spoken more about this issue.
“Honestly, it affects us more in terms of how we market the film and how we use him in the film. There weren’t things we couldn’t do with him as a character, which is good because we obviously drew a lot of inspiration from the source material, but we also made some big changes to anchor it in that world with a veracity that the publisher never achieved.”
This kind of licensing chaos isn’t new, but rather goes back to the start of the MCU in 2008, harkening back to the ’90s, when Marvel faced probable bankruptcy. At that time, the policies for the sale of rights to studios made it easier, for example, for Fox to create its own film saga of the X Men —probably the seed of the superheroic cinema boom.
Nowadays, the agreements and the more lax stances —check through— have made it easier for characters like Spider-Man, owned by Sony along with other heroes and villains from the Spider-Man universe, to have made their appearance in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, so It’s a matter of time before we see Namor on the big screen again… and in good company.