At the start of Comic Con, I told you that Fox had lost David Slade as the director of their upcoming Daredevil reboot. However, we expected a fairly quick turnaround as they're facing an October 10th deadline to start production, otherwise the character rights revert back to Marvel. Now it looks like the studio is close to bringing on Joe Carnahan (The Grey and the much under-appreciated A-Team) to replace Slade, but the-powers-that-be are worried that they're not going to get the train rolling in time, so they're negotiating a deal with Marvel which could prove beneficial to everyone, most of all audiences.
In return for giving Fox an extension on their Daredevil production deadline, Marvel would take back the rights to the characters of Galactus and Silver Surfer.
THAT IS AMAZING!
If the deal goes through, it would be the first time that a studio has relinquished the rights to a major comic character since Marvel embarked upon their ambitious quest to bring a unified Marvel universe to the big screen. And these aren't minor cameo characters; the Avengers are already heading into space, so Galactus, the giant eater of worlds, and his metallic herald would be a perfect fit as to antagonize any/all of the Avengers down the road. While Silver Surfer was actually pretty well realized in the unfortunate Fantastic Four sequel, Fox's treatment of Galactus was downright tragic, so his presence in Phase Two (or Three) of the Marvel-verse can only mean good things for the character.
As much as I'd like to say this looks like the beginning of a new era of character flexibility, paving the way for Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, X-Men and Avengers to all appear in each others movies regardless of studios, I'm still pretty skeptical. This is a straight up even trade, and moreover it feels like a trade for characters that neither studio is really interested in. Josh Trank is already moving forward on his Fantastic Four reboot, and while no villain has been announced, I assume he simply wasn't interested in using Galactus or the Surfer and so Fox saw them as useful collateral to keep a hold on what they see as a franchise character. Meanwhile, as the Marvel-verse gets more cosmic in scale, someone like Daredevil certainly doesn't feel vital to the roadmap Kevin Feige has laid out.
Still, we can dream...
No comments:
Post a Comment