While the news of the day yesterday involved director
Edgar Wright exiting his long-awaited
Ant-Man, it seems a very interesting tidbit slid under most people's radars. It seems that the rights to
Namor, the Sub-Marniner have returned to Marvel Studios in some capacity.
While we all like to pretend we know what's going on with Marvel Studios, we continue to prove we know next to nothing. Yesterday's shocking news about
Ant-Man is one example and the news that the film rights to Marvel's first anti-hero, Namor, is another.
We've all been operating under the assumption that
the film rights to Namor resided at Universal Studios and that's been through no fault of our own ; Marvel Studios' President, Kevin Feige, was the one who gave us the info last year. However, he also,
in a more recent interview with IGN's Jim Vejvoda, mentioned that Namor's rights may not be so cut and dried. When asked to clarify the ownership of the live-action rights to the Sub-Mariner (in addition to Elektra and the Kingpin) Feige said:
"No, Namor I think is a little complicated, the way some of them are. Elektra I think we have. I think that was part of Daredevil, and that's clean and simple. Kingpin we either have or somehow share. I'm not 100 percent clear on that one."
I read the article at the time and filed it away. Recently, with the rumors swirling that Universal was looking to release a Namor film on November 4, 2016, the comment from Feige resurfaced in my brain. Then, yesterday
The Hollywood Reporter's Borys Kit, who has a fantastic track record, tweeted the following in response to an editorial about the superhero movie genre that mentioned the Namor rumor and the live-action rights: