10 Cancelled X-Men Movies We Almost Got
4. Namor, The Sub-Mariner
As early as 1997, talk of a Namor movie existed, with Philip Kaufmann, the auteur behind Invasion Of The Body Snatchers & The Right Stuff attached to direct. He wanted Sam Hamm, who wrote the Burton Batmans, to pen the script, but when that fell through, the venture was shelved.
Since then, a different potential Namor movie with David Self, Chris Columbus and Jonathan Mostow each attached at one time has also been and gone.
The biggest issue was that nobody seemed to know who owned him. Marvel, Fox, Universal and Legendary (who are a Universal subsidiary) have all claimed to own him at one time or another, with his rights reverting and being passed around.
Recently though, Kevin Feige tried to clear up the tricky situation.
Similar to the Hulk, Marvel own the rights to the character, but not the distribution, which is in fact owned by Universal. Although it can get complicated, this essentially means the MCU can use him, as long as it isn’t a Namor movie; think Hulk in Avengers or Ragnarok.
With Okoye’s mention of an earthquake off the coast of Wakanda teasing his arrival, we might actually get to see him in the MCU sooner than you’d think.