The Marvel Cinematic Universe might be the biggest brand in the business, but the studio doesn’t get everything their own way, especially when it comes to the legal minefield of who owns the rights to what characters. Disney had to buy Fox for Marvel to get their hands on the X-Men and Fantastic Four, while Universal played hardball with their ownership of solo movies starring the Hulk for a long time. Though recent reports indicate that that issue is now settled.
Meanwhile, ever since Netflix canceled all of their Marvel shows, most people speculated that it was only a matter of time until the heroes showed up in the MCU, especially with the rights either having already lapsed or set to do so at some point this year, depending on who you ask. Out of the four Defenders, Daredevil has been the one subject to the most rumors about his impending reboot, and Marvel were even said to be keen to keep Charlie Cox on as the Man Without Fear.
However, we’ve now heard from our sources – the same ones that told us She-Hulk and Ms. Marvel shows were in the works for Disney Plus, and that a Witcher prequel is coming to Netflix, all of which were correct – that if the studio wants to use Daredevil in one of their upcoming projects, then they might have to recast the role.
Marvel reportedly still want Matt Murdock to show up in Spider-Man 3, but Cox’s contract is said to be with Netflix and not the show itself, meaning that if they want him that bad, Marvel will either need to buy him out or wait for it to expire. And having essentially been forced into abandoning their entire Marvel universe, the streaming giant is apparently now playing hardball when it comes to letting the stars out of their contracts, meaning that Marvel may need to recast.
While a final decision hasn’t been made yet, the news that Spider-Man 3 has suffered another minor delay means that there’s now some extra time for the two sides to hammer out an agreement, but it likely won’t be a while yet until we find out for sure who’ll be playing Daredevil when we see him in the MCU.
