Photo courtesy 20th Century Fox
Way back at the turn of the century when Marvel began its two decades and counting dominion over the box office with X-Men, no one could have imagined the sustained success the film industry would eventually bring them, but it’s looking more and more like someone did have a vague idea of how it would all play out. Marvel used established studios Sony Pictures and 20th Century Fox that could afford the risk to test the market with properties like Spider-Man, X-Men and the Fantastic Four to spawn a series of movies that I like to think as Marvel’s Phase 0.
After Marvel made its own film studio and established dominance with the first Avengers movies, many of the properties have been trickling back into their hands. Marvel had already reacquired the rights to Hulk after the Ang Lee disaster, and it recently won a long battle with Sony over Spider-Man. 20th Century Fox is doing just fine with X-Men and hopes to get Fantastic Four up and running this summer, though traditional X-Men characters Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch will figure prominently in The Avengers: Age of Ultron.
Of those first five properties, Daredevil is the only one nobody was fighting over. The film was coolly received at the time, and despite members of the cast expressing interest in sequels around the darker Born Again and Guardian Devil storylines, the only movie it spawned was 2005’s reviled Elektra. Criticism was so harsh for star Ben Affleck in particular that he said he’d never dress up in a costume again, a vow he has vehemently held to ever since.
