Marvel explains why Namor can't star in his own movie

One of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever's great achievements has been the official presentation of such an important character in Marvel Comics as Namor, in this case, played by Mexican actor Tenoch Huerta. And beyond his charismatic performance, the actor proposes a version of the character with a convincing and deep background. All this has made many fans wish for a movie with this Namor as the main character, but there are bad news. As with the Hulk, the rights to the character belong to Universal Pictures and they can only participate in the MCU as supporting characters.

Character rights: the MCU's major handicap

This was acknowledged by Nate Moore, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever producer, in statements reported by The Wrap, where he assured that Namor may indeed return to the MCU, although not in a solo film, since, as with Mark Ruffalo's Hulk, they are characters on loan from Universal Pictures:

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"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. 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, but 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," the film's producer acknowledges, explaining why they can't use Namor as a main character.

Let's remember that Marvel sold the rights to many of its characters in the 90's to save itself from bankruptcy, and characters like the Hulk, Namor, the X-Men or Spider-Man passed into the hands of third parties. Now, with the MCU turned into a money-making machine, the company is able to reach agreements to use these characters, or even buy other companies to gain total control, as is the case of Fox's mutants.

Source | The Wrap