The thing that I love about Marvel as a movie studio is that they’ve been willing to pull out some of their lower tier characters and put them on a pedestal. This is partly out of necessity of course; Spiderman and the X-men franchises are arguably the biggest cash cows in Marvel’s potential arsenal, and those franchises are tied up at Sony and Fox respectively. Don’t get me wrong, Iron Man and Captain America are hardly B listers in the Marvel U, but they certainly aren’t the most recognizable faces in pop culture either (or at least they weren’t).
Marvel made due with the rights they had retained and instead concentrated on world building, something that hadn’t been attempted in cinematic history up to that point – creating a fluid universe that included multiple films, culminating in a huge crossover event: The Avengers.
The rest is history, and the resulting good will with the audience is allowing them to take risks. Upcoming films for Ant-Man and The Guardians of the Galaxy were the stuff of fanboy dreams not all that long ago (even most comic book fans had only a passing understanding of GotG before the movie was announced) and are now likely to pull in pretty decent box office when released.
When Marvel regained the rights to Daredevil I immediately said that they should make the Man Without Fear into a TV series. Not only did Marvel eventually announce said TV series, but they did one better and announced that we’d also be getting a Jessica Jones show, a Power Man show (Luke Cage), an Iron Fist show, and a TV crossover event in the form of The Defenders series. And all of these would be on Netflix starting in 2015 (Huzzah for binge watching!!!).
Now, with that said it seems the possibilities of future movies and television shows are only bound by the rights Marvel has retained. Here is a list of what I would like to see make it to the big/small screen. Please note I haven’t included properties that are already heavily rumored like Dr. Strange or Black Panther – those will likely happen sooner or later.
Television Series – Moon Knight
In the past Marvel has had a problem really selling Moon Knight. He’s pretty much Marvel’s take on Batman, but with multiple personality disorder, which sounds badass, but for whatever reason he hasn’t been able to crack above “C List” fame. That might be changing though, with Warren Ellis taking on writing duties for Moon Knight’s new series. The first issue was great and with a potential ground swell in popularity there is no reason he couldn’t do well in his own Netflix series (I wouldn’t put a Moon Knight show on ABC, it would be too violent).
TV makes sense for Moon Knight for a couple of reasons. With multiple personalities, the character will need time to be fully realized. Film won’t offer the opportunities that a more long form series could, and with the comic seemingly shifting more focus onto the character’s detective abilities it would make sense to have a “case” go the length of a season. The second reason is the violence. Making a PG-13 rated Moon Knight movie would be difficult, but you could get away with a bit more on unrated television or TV-MA. Personally, this is the most exciting one for me personally on this list.
Television Series – Elektra
With Daredevil making his TV debut next year, it only makes sense that the deadly assassin, and major Daredevil supporting character Elektra would follow on his heels. I’d imagine that she’ll first make a cameo appearance in the Daredevil series before spinning off on her own. Perhaps there would be a crossover event that includes a certain villain whose really damn good at darts…
Movie or Television series – Spider Woman
With the Spiderman property likely tied up with Sony until the end of tie (or at least until they stop making bajillions of dollars on it) there is currently a dearth of spider related heroism going on in the Marvel cinematic universe. Another lacking element is the number of main female heroes. I suppose you could try to count Black Widow (she may get her own movie in the future), but she’s more of an ancillary character than main protagonist. Enter Jessica Drew: Spider Woman.
Spider Woman is a damn interesting character in my opinion. My only fear is that there could be audience confusion with Spider-man soon to be getting annualized films from Sony, which is why I would love to introduce her in another film (Avengers 3 perhaps?) before spinning her off into her own Netflix show or a movie.
Movie – Inhumans
If I were Marvel, I wouldn’t want all of my film properties explicitly tied to each other like the phase one films were. You could have multiple microcosms throughout the greater universe to allow for more jumping on points for new fans, or just to offer a different flavor. The cosmic universe of Marvel may be the least popular group of comics (for now) but it offers a plethora of opportunities. As previously stated, GotG will be the first to dabble in this area. That film will be to the cosmic universe as Iron Man 1 was to the current Marvel films – a jumping off point for a greater shared universe. Aside from an obvious sequel to the GotG (assuming the film does well) I would suspect Marvel would want to expand that aspect of the universe with the next biggest element, the Inhumans.
The Inhumans offer the opportunity to do something very different than previous films, even GotG. I for one, am a big fan of these characters and with their new ongoing series set to debut (Inhuman) I would not be surprised if we see these guys in either the next GotG (they could also have a post credits teaser) or in their own feature film.
Honorable Mention – Movie – Nova
I love Nova, especially Annihilation era Nova. With the Nova Corps making an appearance in GotG this one seems like a no-brainer. To be honest, I think this would work better as a TV show about the Nova Corps as a whole (NYPD, but in space) but I’d worry that the effects budget would be a bit too constraining. It’s also possible that Nova never gets his own film (like Hawkeye – another dude that would do well in TV) and instead appears as a supporting character in cosmic U films.
Of course, I could go on, but I won’t. Let me know what you think of my suggestions and post your own thoughts and wish list in the comments section! Looking forward to hearing what you all think.
Game on.
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