Well, well, well, guess what properties are back in the hands of Marvel Studios? Prodigal sons, Blade and Ghost Rider have been welcomed home by the powerhouse studio which is working hard to bring as many of their heroes home as possible.
Back in the bleak, unprofitable days before Marvel started producing their own films, they sold the rights to their characters to various studios, some of whom spun out their own huge franchises– Sony and Spider-Man, Fox and X-Men plus The Fantastic Four— and some of whom suffered disappointing flops.
Although the films were disappointments for the licensing studios, their failures made it easier for Marvel Studios to continue to round up as many of the old gang back as possible. Earlier this week, Marvel confirmed that they had secured the rights to Daredevil and now they’ve brought back two more.
While the films are back in Marvel Studios stable, president Kevin Feige indicated that we shouldn’t assume that means you’ll be seeing new movies about them immediately. “They all have potential, but we’re not going to say ‘We got it back – make it.’”
Ghost Rider, a character previously owned by Sony, got his own sequel just last year with the widely loathed Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, a follow-up to the not-especially-beloved original Ghost Rider. With few fans clamoring for them to continue the franchise and a much more lucrative Spider-Man series to focus on, you can see why Sony was willing to let it go. The Blade series has been dormant for a while now, since 2004’s Blade: Trinity, and the rights were owned by New Line, the subsidiary of Warner Bros. that’s faced major financial woes recently. You can’t blame them for letting it go either.
Now we have to see how Marvel might revive either character, though take Feige’s warning seriously– their plans for Phase Two are already incredibly busy, and you probably have to wait until Ant-Man finally emerges for hard details on anything on Ghost Rider and Blade. But fans of the characters, rejoice! You’re way more likely to see them again on screen now that they’ve back in the Marvel family.