Marvel Studios’ “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” finally saw the introduction of the comics character Namor (aka. The Submariner), who served as the film’s antagonist.
Tenoch Huerta stars as the character who has become one of the film’s most talked about elements, and there’s little question that both Marvel Studios itself and the fans want more of him.
However, producer Nate Moore confirmed to The Wrap that the situation surrounding the character is basically the same as that of the Incredible Hulk. They can use him in an ensemble or other hero’s films, but they can’t give him his own standalone film as he is a character still controlled by another studio – namely Universal Pictures.
Similarly, he also can’t appear by himself in marketing materials, unless it’s part of a series of posters, with Moore saying that the element of using him to sell the film is trickier than actually using the character in the film itself:
“It honestly affects us more, and not to talk too much out of school, but in how we market the film than it does how we use him in the film.
There weren’t really things we couldn’t do from a character perspective for him, which is good because clearly, we took a ton of inspiration from the source material, but we also made some big changes to really anchor him in that world in a truth that publishing never really landed on, I would argue, in a big way.”
Moore, a self-described Namor fan, also praised co-writer/director Ryan Coogler for his different take on the material and how the ownership of the rights had no impact on those changes:
“I’ve read every Namor comic ever written, and I love them, but the world of Atlantis is a little vaguely drawn. It’s maybe kind of Roman maybe.
Ryan is such a detail-oriented filmmaker that he wanted to anchor into something that felt as tangible and real as hopefully Wakanda fuels for people. And I think there was nothing from a business side anyway that was preventing us from doing that, which is great.”
Universal tried making a standalone “Namor” film throughout much of the early 2000s. Amongst those attached was “The Right Stuff” by director Philip Kaufman with a script by “Batman” scribe Sam Hamm, then came a script by “Road to Perdition” scribe David Self with Chris Columbus (“Harry Potter” 1 & 2) set to direct. Later, “U-571” helmer Jonathan Mostow was hired to direct, but the project never eventuated.
