Blade & Punisher Screen Rights Revert to Disney/Marvel

[Sotiris]

Before Marvel started actively making movies itself, as you probably know, it licensed the rights out to many of its properties to other studios.

The terms of most of the deals appeared to be along the lines of if films or TV shows weren’t forthcoming in a period of time, then said rights would revert to Marvel. So, that’s why, for instance, Fox is looking at new takes on the Fantastic Four and Daredevil properties. If it doesn’t, the rights will go back to Marvel. And given that Marvel is owned by Disney these days, they’re not likely to be granted again.

Which brings us to Blade and The Punisher. Both of these characters have had three movies apiece now, but both have been off the big (and small) screen for some time. And now, Marvel Comics CEO, Joe Quesada, has confirmed that the rights have duly reverted back as a result.

Right now, there are no immediate plans to do anything with either of them, but the longer term plan appears to be to bring both back to the screen in due course.

We suspect that Blade will be further up the roster than The Punisher, not least because the latter would need, once again, to be R-rated, and there’s little appetite for making R-rated comic book movies in Hollywood right now. Furthermore, the Blade trilogy remains a solid success, and The Punisher movies, er, didn't really do very well at all.

Source: http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/991095/ ... oming.html

[milojthatch]

Even though I'm a huge fan of Marvel, I'm not so much a fan of either of these characters. I also think both of these guys make strong cases for Disney to not use the Disney name with future "Marvel Studios" films.