Marvel’s Decades-Old Film Slate Goes Viral

Long before the days of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Marvel Studios largely produced films in partnership with outside studios. There was Blade with New Line Cinema, Sam Raim’s Spider-Man trilogy with Sony, 20th Century Fox’s X-Men franchise, and more sprinkled throughout Hollywood. While there weren’t plans to create an interconnected universe at the time, Marvel’s one-time film release slate has started to go viral after being shared on Twitter in a new age.

In the tweet, shared by @AjepArts on Monday, a standing banner can be seen sporting the logos of a bunch of movies—some that made it to theaters, and a substantial amount that did not. There’s the then-SciFi Original Man-Thing and Jennifer Garner’s Elektra, then there are also projects that never saw the light of day like Fury, Deathlok, and Namor.

HOLY SHIT! In my journeys, I discovered MARVELs film slate in 2004… pic.twitter.com/Zh6OvyRY3C

— AJ | 🏳️‍🌈 | Halloween Era (@AjepArts) March 15, 2022

Interestingly enough, some of the movies on the slate did get made, only as part of Marvel Studios’ Marvel Cinematic Universe, including Iron Man and Captain America. At one point, Artisan Entertainment and Marvel Studios even signed a pact for 15 projects ranging from Iron Fist and Black Widow to Mort the Dead Teenager and Longshot.

“Over the last year, Marvel Studios has gotten extremely aggressive in becoming the entertainment arm of Marvel Entertainment, and this joint venture shows that commitment,” then-Marvel Studios boss Avi Arad told Variety at the time. “The companies are similar in their taste for cutting-edge entertainment and the idea here is for us to develop our product so that both companies can expand rapidly.”

“Artisan is not in the business of creating $80 million to $120 million action event films and certain Marvel characters lend themselves to that and nothing but that,” Artisan partner Amir Malin added. “We don’t want to develop characters that, at the end of the day, we know we won’t finance. But there are so many franchises that as we develop our first group of projects, we’ll have our eyes on other titles from the library.

Which of Marvel’s old movies would you like to see made into a feature film or Disney+ series? Let us know you thoughts either in the comments section or by hitting our writer @AdamBarnhardt up on Twitter to chat all things Marvel!