2022’s Werewolf By Night gave hope that some darker Marvel characters may be entering the MCU, such as Elsa Bloodstone and Man-Thing. Jack Russell AKA Werewolf By Night, Bloodstone and Man-Thing could all be found in the Midnight Sons and Legion of Monsters – a series of comics that also included cool characters such as Red Hulk, Blade, Ghost Rider, Manphibian, Frankenstein….. and Morbius.
It’s fairly well-known that Ghost Rider got his own movie in 2007, but it’s definitely less known that Man-Thing also had his own movie – in 2005. Man-Thing was a R-rated horror movie with a $5 million budget, so it somewhat stands out next to most Marvel movies. But it turns out that before Kevin Feige kick-started the MCU in 2008 with Iron Man, he was a champion of Man-Thing, as one of the exec producers.
Director Brett Leonard told ComicBook.com; “He was actually one of the greatest supporting energies because when I sent the dailies, he really loved the dailies. He loved how I was moving the camera. He was very, very helpful. He was a great guy. And he was just a sweet man, and is to this day. His success is well deserved. He was a great executive to work with.”
Feige would then give Leonard notes on the film, which the filmmaker looks upon fondly to this day. “I have great emails from him, complimenting me on the camera movement. So I always think, well, there you go. I got somebody in Marvel that loved this film. Because this is, again, it’s an outlier in the Marvel universe. The way it was made, the budget it was made at, how it was made, what the scripting process was and how that changed. All of those things were unique in this film.”
It would be cool if horror is embraced a bit more by the MCU, and it would be great to see Gael Garcia Bernal’s Jack Rusell and Laura Donnelly’s Elsa Bloodstone again. With Marvel series such as Moon Knight, they have shown that they will go into weirder places on Disney Plus than on the big screen.
Check out our guide to Marvel’s Phase 5.