Last month we discussed the proposed Daredevil reboot that Fox has been trying to get off the ground. Word is now that David Slade has left the project due to the hurried schedule the studio has been pushing for it. They are rushing it because if it doesn’t get made soon, the rights would revert back to Marvel.
If that happened everyone in the world would be happy and Fox can’t allow that.
When Marvel had their character fire sale at the beginning of the millennium they had some confusing agreements. Basically the studios would hold onto the film rights of the characters as long as they continued to make movies about them. That is why the first Wolverine spinoff had the title ‘X-Men Origins’ tacked on to it. Wolverine is the most recognizable X-Men name and doesn’t need a lead in, but securing the rights were important. ‘X-Men: First Class’ was rushed in order to hold the rights, but somehow came out pretty good. I still don’t give that movie a ton of credit because of the death of Darwin. His mutant power is to not die, and they killed him. Nonsense.
Fox is currently scrambling for a director for Daredevil. They have a script that is apparently not great and directors are leaving it constantly when the time pressure keeps them from fixing it. If the film rights could go back to Marvel though, their would be much rejoicing. Marvel knows their characters, they’ve shown that with each in house film.
Also the integrated universe is incredibly refreshing. The fact that it the new Spider-Man film was set in a different universe bothered me so much. Other than feeling complete it makes the sight of a man in tights swinging from building to building less crazy. Street reactions in the new film were very mild and it bugged the crap out of me. If this was in the shared universe, who cares, people are now accustomed to heroes.
We all know that ultimately movies are made to make money, it is a business after all. But it still feels gross that these movies are being made to retain movie rights, not to tell compelling stories. We have seen the results of movies made just to keep the rights, and most have been rushed to make release dates, and the majority haven’t been pretty.