Marvel Regain Film Rights To Namor, The Sub-Mariner

Long-time Marvel Comics editor Joe Quesada says that the company have regained the rights to one of their oldest characters.

Quesada was speaking on a podcast with Kevin Smith, when the question arose of why there hasn’t been a Namor the Sub-Mariner movie yet, and where the rights to that property lay.

While the Marvel Chief Creative Officer did not give any indication that a film was in the works, he did remark, “Yes, as far as I know yes we do [own the movie rights]. Yeah, it’s not at Fox, it’s not at Sony.“ (Quotes via Comic Book.)

The big screen rights to Marvel’s various characters has long been a tricky situation. When the company was in dire financial straits in the 1990s, the rights to many individual properties were sold far and wide.

Today, the screen rights to the bulk of Marvel’s characters have returned to Marvel; the notable exceptions being Spider-Man, owned by Sony (who have since entered an agreement to share the character with Marvel), plus the X-Men and Fantastic Four, which are owned by 20th Century Fox.

Namor, however, has been something of an anomaly. Although no film featuring the character has ever been made, Universal had the rights, and were developing a feature based around the character in the mid-2000s, with Chris Colombus in line to direct.

It has previously been hinted that complex legal issues with Universal have kept Marvel from using Namor; it should be noted the studio also still partially owns The Hulk, hence Marvel have only been able to use that character in team-up movies (the two ‘Avengers’ films, and the upcoming ‘Thor: Ragnarok’).

However, if Quesada is correct (while we have no reason to doubt him, it should be stressed he works primarily on the comics side as opposed to the movies), then Marvel may have Namor entirely at their disposal again.

Still, does this mean the studio will choose to do anything with him? Things could get interesting, and potentially a little tense if they do - as the character bears more than a passing resemblance to DC’s Aquaman, who will soon feature in 2017′s ‘Justice League’ with his own solo movie set to hit later.

Namor was introduced back when Marvel was still known as Timely Comics, with other the key enduring characters of that time being Captain America and The Human Torch (who would be relaunched in a different form for The Fantastic Four in the 1960s).

Having made his first appearance in 1939, Namor pre-dates Aquaman by two years: but like DC’s character, he is a king of Atlantis, with all the underwater super-powers and strength we might associate with such a title.

However, he’s traditionally a somewhat darker character, more of a volatile anti-hero than a clean-cut good guy. He was also an antagonist to The Fantastic Four at some points.

So far, Marvel have confirmed every film they plan to release up to 2019; and as time passes, speculation will only intensify as to where they’ll be headed beyond that point.

Can we anticipate a Namor the Sub-Mariner movie at some point in the 2020s? We’ll just have to watch this space.

Picture Credit: Marvel

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