What’s the Deal with a Live-Action Moon Knight, Anyway?

Once upon a time, Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige admitted that Moon Knight is a character the studio wants to bring into live-action. On top of that, superstar writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely (Avengers: Endgame) teased the potential of a great Moonie story out there. Heck, even Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn once pitched Marvel his idea of a Moon Knight story.

On top of that, Moon Knight is slowly turning into one of the highest-ticket items among comic book collectors. In the past week, there’s only been one copy of Werewolf by Night #32 that’s sold for under $500 on eBay — something pretty uncommon for a lower-tier character that has yet to appear in live-action.

With such a demand for Marc Spector, why the wait? An easy enough explanation would be that Marvel Studios has enough stuff on its plate for the foreseeable future that a feature based on the Fist of Khonshu isn’t in immediate plans for the studio. Feige pretty much teased that last summer with ScreenRant.

“Yes,” Feige said when asked if he had plans for the character. “Does that mean five years from now, 10 years from now, 15 years from now? There are stacks of character cards that we have in our, in our development offices, which we look at. Which we pull for him, which we discussed.”

And that’s when it gets tricky. If Feige and company have their interests piqued by a certain character, there’s little chance that character will be able to make its way over to Marvel Television. Many fans — this Moonie included — think that the character would fair better on a television series, where serialized storytelling would allow us to fully examine the character’s rich backstory and depth, but if Feige’s someone interested in a Moon Knight film, there’s little that can be done.

That’s not to say it’d ever happen. If you remember back to that big slate release at the El Capitan Theater, Inhumans was a movie that Marvel Studios had planned and eventually, that property was handed over to Marvel Television, where it died a very quiet death.

As it stands right now, Moon Knight isn’t a film that’s been heavily speculated as something that could come to fruition — at least in a timely manner. Next year will likely see the release of Black Widow and The Eternals before Shang-Chi and a few sequels — likely Black Panther 2 and Doctor Strange 2 — are released in 2021. That means that one of the first “open” dates many speculators believe would be available would be in February 2022 and even then, there’s been heavy speculation that Nova could be a character Feige has his eyes on.

Do you think Moon Knight is better suited for film or television/streaming? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below or by tweeting me at @AdamBarnhardt!

Avengers: Endgame is out now and Spider-Man: Far From Home swings into theaters July 2nd. Captain Marvel is now available digitally ahead of a home media release June 11th.