Recently, an odd thing was announced. Legendary Pictures, behind this week’s Godzilla, announced a major summer movie for 2016. What is it? Nobody knows. Legendary wouldn’t say anything other than “We’ve got a major event movie coming out in 2016.” But there’s a likely candidate, and it’s none other than everybody’s favorite pointy-eared arrogant jackass, Namor the Sub-Mariner.
For those unfamiliar, Namor lives in a city under the sea and occasionally tries to flood the surface world and/or bang other men’s wives. He’s also really strong, provided he stays moist. Hey, they’ve built better movies on worse ideas.
Admittedly, this is a rumor from the notoriously unreliable Latino Review, but as /Film points out, it actually makes a lot of sense. Universal currently holds the rights to Namor, they want to get in on the Marvel feeding frenzy while there’s still a carcass to pick over in the water, and Universal has to make a movie featuring Namor sooner or later, or lose the rights.
It also offers some clarity to those bizarre Zac Efron rumors we heard about yesterday, which admittedly are equally unreliable and from the same source. Universal would probably want somebody who looks like a robot assembled by gay scientists to be running around in nothing but green scaly short shorts and flighty little wings on his feet, especially one that just made them a massive amount of money.
The downsides, though, are pretty large. One, Namor doesn’t even have a script. Two, it doesn’t have a director. Three, it’s a water shoot, and making a movie on and under the water is an expensive and dangerous nightmare. Basically, for this to be real, Universal has to be planning to script it, shoot it, cut it, and get all the effects done by the time we ring in the year of 2016.
It’s not impossible, and sheer bullheadedness might make it happen: The only thing movie studios love more than dumptrucks full of money is to keep intellectual property away from other movie studios, on the off chance that they can sell it back for dumptrucks full of money. So, keep a pointy ear out, as we’ll probably hear more about this at Comic-Con if it’s real.