After years of waiting, we finally got to see Namor join the MCU in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. There had been rumblings Marvel Studios might have plans for the anti-hero stretching as far back as Captain America: The First Avenger, but could a solo movie be next for the Talokan King?
Nope.
During a recent interview with The Wrap, Marvel Studios producer Nate Moore confirmed that Namor "can return," but complicated rights issues with Universal Pictures make a solo movie an impossibility. We suspected this might be the case, of course, and it seems poor Namor is stuck in the same predicament as The Hulk.
"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," Moore explains. "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."
"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," he continues. "I’ve read every Namor comic ever written and I love them, but the world of Atlantis is a little vaguely drawn."
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."
As Moore alludes to there, Namor can only appear in posters provided they are part of a series (so, character posters, for example). Moving forward, the Sub-Mariner can continue to be part of projects with other heroes, but it's clear now that rumours he's getting his own spin-off are blatantly false.
The Black Panther sequel definitely set the stage for more stories revolving around the antagonist, anyway, so we're sure he'll return to the MCU sooner rather than later.
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is now playing in theaters.