For those wondering where Daredevil was during the New York invasion at the climax of The Avengers, Or why S.H.I.E.L.D. spent so much time looking for The Hulk and recruiting second string heroes when Matt Murdock lived a few blocks away from Stark Tower in Hell's Kitchen... it was to do with rights and other ownership legal issues. It is the same reason why S.H.I.E.L.D. didn't ask for help from X-Men or the Fantastic Four. Each of these three properties on film are currently owned by Fox from a decades long license agreement. However, confirmation came down the pike this week that
Fox's rights to Hell's Kitchen hero Daredevil have now officially lapsed. So, Marvel's "The Man Without Fear" can now return to its Marvel/Disney home.
Empire have now confirmed this story also. Rumours about this lapse have existed for some time now and were apparently red hot around the Iron Man 3 circuit. Sadly, that is the extent of the news. There is no film announced yet and I don't want to speculate too much. There have been a number of a planned reboots of the Daredevil franchise over the years. These were all dropped or straight up killed, the list was rather impressive. Fox still has retained their rights to both the X-Men and the Fantastic Four, as these often considered "better titles". There are a bunch of questions that must be asked, what will Marvel do now? Will Murdock get the Marvel Studio treatment in his own movie? Will they tie him into it into the Phase Two series? Or will they wait until for other titles to lapse? And then work on the dreamed Spidey (owned by Sony)/Fantastic Four/Daredevil tie-in? I have no idea. This is good news. And as a huge Daredevil fan, it is great that we may see Matt Murdock on the big screen sometime soon. Again there is a lot of speculation from this news and we can only guess at Disney's next move. We will keep you updated as this develops.