How’s this for something to make a person stroke their chin in equanimity: A certain character or characters could be returning to a movie home with Marvel Studios in the near future from their very abusive home at Fox. I mean let’s face it, Fox has screwed up with nearly every Marvel movie they’ve churned out of their mediocre studio. Wolverine, the Fantastic  Four movies, Daredevil, Elektra and the Ghost Rider movies have all blown goats of the highest caliber! The only franchise they’ve had some good results with is the X-Men franchise, and even that took a couple stutter steps. I’m always hoping that Fox can step it up and I’m hopeful that Wolverine 2 (The Wolverine) and Josh Trank’s forthcoming Fantastic Four reboot can begin setting things right. Daredevil is another matter entirely and one of the big reasons as to all of the talk and rumors about certain characters reverting back to Marvel.

Like the Hellraiser franchise last year, Dimension needed to do something with the rights or risk losing them. So they produced a crappy movie that was finished in weeks and released on DVD, and now they are supposedly working on a reboot for the franchise. This is the same issue that Fox has with the Daredevil rights. If they don’t start production on a Daredevil movie by October 10th, then ‘the Man Without Fear’ would return to the Marvel Studios stable. This then brings up the rumors of a deal where Fox would trade the characters of Galactus and Silver Surfer back to Marvel so they can retain the rights to Daredevil. Because really, would Fox have the balls to produce a cheap piece of crap like Dimension did with Hellraiser just to hang onto it? I doubt it. They fail at even trying to make legitimate comic movies, let-alone an intentionally crappy one. Studio insiders at Fox are denying all of this of course and as I said it is all rumor at this point, but there has to be some truth to it or no one would be reporting on it.

There are a few different ways that this could boil down.

– Fox could make a piece of crap Daredevil movie and keep his rights, as well as those of Galactus and Silver Surfer, and then make a potentially decent Daredevil flick somewhere down the road.

– Fox could cut a deal with Marvel, letting Galactus and Silver Surfer go back with Marvel and avoid having to make a crappy Daredevil just for the sake of hanging onto the rights.

– ORRRRRRR Fox does absolutely nothing with Daredevil and loses him to Marvel while hanging on to Galactus and Silver Surfer.

Who knows what will happen at this point as the talks continue.

Joe Carnahan (The Grey, The A-Team) is currently in talks with Fox to direct the Daredevil reboot, and as stated before, Chronicle director Josh Trank is going to be rebooting the Fantastic Four franchise for Fox. I don’t see why Fox would have a problem letting Galactus and Silver Surfer go to hang onto Daredevil, because Trank would still have plenty of villains to draw on from the Fantastic Four comics. Dr. Doom is the obvious first choice and could carry over into any sequels. Then they can still use the Skrulls, Annihilus and the Mole Man. Regardless of how stupid the Mole Man looks, they could absolutely change him up to be a legitimate threat in a Fantastic Four movie.

This may just all be wishful thinking on my part since it appears that Marvel is certainly ramping up their foray into the cosmic scene with Thor, Avengers and now an upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy movie. Imagine if they had Galactus and Silver Surfer to add into the mix? The Galactus Seed storyline from the Mighty Thor comic in 2011 comes to mind as a great possibility for a crossover movie between Thor and the Asgardians squaring off against Galactus and the Silver Surfer.

I would honestly hate to see Daredevil made into such a terrible film again, but one could only hope that Fox sees how badly it botched the first one. You know, when they cast Ben Affleck and made DD look like the Gimp from Pulp Fiction? And I’d be willing for the trade off of Fox potentially doing that film right in return for Marvel Studios to add more players to its cosmic sandbox.