‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’ has been having a dream run at the box office. Having recently grossed over $600M worldwide, one of the fan favorites after the release is the main antagonist. With fans demanding a solo movie for the character, we’ll be the bearer of bad news for you: it’s not going to happen anytime soon.
You must be aware of the unique situation of Spiderman’s rights concerning Marvel and Sony. While the character rights are currently in hands of Sony, the two biggies have entered into an agreement that allows Marvel to use Spiderman in the MCU.
In simple words, it’s the same with Namor.
The mutant antagonist Namor’s rights are currently with Universal Pictures and are not exclusively owned by Marvel Studios. While the character appeared in ‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’ due to an agreement between Marvel and Universal, according to the producer of the movie Nate Moore, the agreement does not allow for a solo film of the submariner. Marvel can use Namor individually for their marketing, however, as of now, anything more that will be centered solely on Namor is off the table.
But does that mean we will not get to see the antagonist more in the MCU? Thankfully, no. The agreement does allow Namor to make appearances in other MCU movies. This deal is similar to the situation regarding Hulk. Unaware to many, the character rights of Hulk are also held by Universal Pictures, which is why we haven’t had a solo Hulk film in the MCU yet.
Most of these complications can be traced back to the 90s when Marvel was on the brink of bankruptcy. Then, to generate money, a lot of character rights were sold by the company to others. One such big deal was the sale of the rights of X-men to Fox, which resulted in them making the successful X-men franchise in the early 2000s.
Having discovered the true cash cows that such superheroes are, it seems very unlikely that the companies will give the characters back to Marvel, whatever the lucrative deals offered. A win-win situation would be to let Marvel continue using the characters to increase their popularity and then for the companies like Universal Pictures to themselves make their solo movies in association with Marvel, much like what Sony is doing now.
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