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More Marvel movie superheroes come home to roost

Slowly but surely, they’re all coming home!

Marvel Studios recently made news by confirming that the company had re-acquired the film rights to comic book hero Daredevil from rival studio Fox. Now, it seems that even more of the company’s characters are coming back into the fold.

In a recent interview from the upcoming issue of Entertainment Weekly, Marvel Studios head honcho Kevin Feige confirmed that the film rights to characters like Ghost Rider, Punisher, and Blade have all returned to the studio.

“Whenever a character comes back to us, it’s usually because the other studios don’t want to make the movies anymore – and that usually means the [previous] movies may not have been particularly well-received,” Feige said.

However, Feige clarified that just because Marvel controls the characters again doesn’t mean the company is planning to rush new Blade or Ghost Rider movies into production. “They all have potential, but we’re not going to say ‘We got it back – make it.’”

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So, what does this more cautious approach mean for the future of those big screen characters? Well, not much right now. Marvel is still figuring out its plans for “Phase 2” of their cinematic universe, which kicks off with the May 3 release “Iron Man 3” and will end with “The Avengers 2.” Blade, Ghost Rider, and the Punisher could quite easily return to theatres as part of the studio’s “Phase 3,” but their darker, more violent tone may not exactly jibe with the rest of the movies Marvel puts out.

All this comic book character news comes hot on the heels of both “Avengers” director Joss Whedon and Feige tip-toeing around the rumoured plans to include some very high profile X-Men characters (who have yet to be used by studio Fox on the big screen) in “The Avengers 2.” At last week’s “Iron Man 3” premiere, Whedon hinted that a notable brother-sister duo from the Marvel universe would be making an appearance in the sequel to 2012’s superhero ensemble, but wouldn’t name the pair. Of course, any fan of Marvel Comics knows that Whedon was almost certainly referring to mutant siblings Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch – children of the "X-Men" nemesis Magneto.

But how is that even possible? Keeping which movie studio owns which characters straight is difficult at times, but it basically boils down to this: 20th Century Fox controls the movie rights to the "X-Men" franchise, Sony has cinematic dibs on "Spider-Man," and Marvel proper controls the big screen iterations of "Iron Man," "Captain America," "Thor," and the rest of the "Avengers" family. Given that the owners of said franchises are all rival companies, any kind of major crossover is pretty unlikely, not to mention legally complex.

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Here’s where things get a little tricky though. A few characters – like Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch – are up for grabs because they appear in both the X-comics and stories based around Marvel’s Avengers superteam. Basically, whichever company uses the characters on the big screen first gets to control them.

It's still up in the air whether Fox owns exclusive film rights to comic book concepts like “mutation” or if Disney can even mention that Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch are the spawn of Magneto. But who knows? Maybe this all part of a larger plan and Disney and Fox have some major crossover announcements to make.

An "X-Men" and "Avengers" team up – though still highly unlikely – would be guaranteed to make the billion dollar box office success of “The Avengers” look like chump change. "Spider-Man" is starting to look very lonely over at Sony.