Marvel Studios practically broke Twitter Tuesday afternoon when it announced phase 3 for its movies. But although it’s got a pretty full slate for the next 5 years (at least), there’s still several Marvel characters that have yet to make to the big screen. Can we expect every Marvel character to be making an appearance at some point?
The short answer is no. And the unusual answer behind that isn’t because Marvel has enough on its plate right now. It’s that Marvel doesn’t own the rights to some of its characters anymore.
Marvel is an unusually complex case anytime it makes it to a courtroom. Its worlds and characters are being created — and re-created — by hundreds of different people, even without licensing things like films or merchandise. As Jason Shinn wrote on his blog Michigan Employment Law Advisor, it can sometimes be unclear where in the decades of work contracts were signed and what that means today. Shinn writes:
Gary Friedrich sued his former employer comic book publisher Marvel Entertainment, LLC claiming that he created the comic book character “Ghost Rider” back in the early 1970s. The value of the Ghost Rider character significantly increased since the 1970s because of increased revenue from movies, video games, and promotional products….Marvel took the position that the Ghost Rider character was created as a “work for hire” under the copyright laws and, therefore, Marvel and its successor companies continued to be the owner of all rights and interests in the intellectual property.
Marvel ultimately won the case, a result that has been played out in many courts including against iconic comic book artist Jack Kirby’s heirs.
It’s an unusual conundrum, and even more strange in light of Marvel’s innovative roll-out plan for their films. With the end goal being an extensive and cohesive universe with characters jumping between blockbusters, many fans of the original series hoped to see Wolverine make a cameo in the “Avengers” movie.
Ultimately that wouldn’t happen, and not just because Hugh Jackman was busy teaching Russell Crowe how to sing. As Carl Lee writes for Screen Rant:
In legal speak, Fox owns a piece of the X-Men film franchise; they have the “rights” to produce any character that frequently appears in the X-Men Universe, projects like “X-Men: First Class” and “X-Men Origins: Magneto” insure Fox will be milking that property for everything it’s possibly worth. Ultimately, any mutants like Bishop, Cable, Emma Frost, Juggernaut, Havoc, Psylocke, or Quicksilver would likely appear through a Fox-funded lens.
Lee continues that Fox technically also owns anything Daredevil, Fantastic Four, or Silver Surfer related. It was all brought about from the early years of Marvel studios. During the 1990s, the newly-formed Marvel Studios started licensing its characters out to studios to spread its seed. And that’s why Fox has all things X-men (though it splits Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver with Marvel Studios), Sony has Spider-man and Venom, Universal owns the rights to Namor, and Marvel Studios owns everything else. Marvel only recently reacquired the rights to some, including Black Panther, one of the newest movies to be announced, and it’ll be tricky if they want to acquire any more.
Either they wait for a title to become so unappealing that the studio drops it (which is the reason the Hulk got to be featured in “Avengers”) or they shell out a lot of money. Considering that superhero movies don’t often lose money these days, I’m guessing it’ll be the latter. But many of the contracts feature stipulations that revert the character back to Marvel if they don’t start principal photography quickly enough (which is the reason Quicksilver got shoehorned into “X-men: Days of Future Past”).
But now that Marvel Studios is a subsidiary of Disney that could all change. Disney is notoriously uptight about its copyrights, most recently when the company filed “a mammoth 171-page Notice of Opposition,” which claimed that it “owns longstanding rights in its mouse ears mark,” writes Kevin Hartley for Trademarkology. As it stands now, Disney is already battling one court case for the rights to Marvel in Colorado. If Disney chooses to get all its superhero ducks in a row, there’s no telling what we’ll be left marveling at.
