Werewolf by Night may be joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe

Last Updated on August 10, 2021

A recent episode of the Disney+ Marvel series Loki acknowledged the existence of vampires in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, paving the way for the upcoming Blade reboot that is set to star Mahershala Ali, with Bassam Tariq signed on to direct the film from a screenplay by Stacy Osei-Kuffour. And if there are vampires in the MCU, can werewolves be far behind? Kevin Smith has heard that Marvel has plans to bring the character Werewolf by Night to the screen.

Smith discussed Werewolf by Night on a recent episode of his Fatman Beyond podcast, where he revealed that he was told he couldn't use the character on the Howard the Duck animated series he was hired to make for Hulu a couple years back. Smith said, 

For a red hot minute, I was working on Howard the Duck and before Dave [Willis, Aqua Teen Hunger Force co-creator] got involved, when it was just me, Jeph Loeb was like 'Hey man, I think you'd be good for Howard the f–king Duck.' I reached out to Walter Flanagan from Comic Book Men and told him I'm gonna take a stab at all the f–king '70s characters. Walt was giving suggestions and Werewolf by Night was absolutely on the list. In my head, as I started building my season, I was like, 'Alright. Episode 5. Werewolf by Night.' The idea of our story was that Howard was trapped here (on Earth) and he was trying to get pages of the Darkhold, which would allow him to go back (to Duckworld). There's Howard as I'm laying it out and then I go into Jeph and told him what I wanted to do, and that's when they said 'You can't use Werewolf by Night,' and I asked why. They said the movie division was using him."

The Howard the Duck cartoon ended up getting scrapped, along with some other animated Marvel shows that were in the works at Hulu at the time. Werewolf by Night still hasn't made his screen debut, but fans have been speculating that the character could show up on the Disney+ series Moon Knight, since the Moon Knight character first appeared in Werewolf by Night #32, in August of 1975.

Werewolf by Night's first comic book appearance was in Marvel Spotlight #2, in February 1972. The human alter ego of the original version of the character is named Jack Russell. Last year, a second Werewolf by Night character was introduced in the pages of a comic book co-written by Taboo of the Black Eyed Peas. The human alter ego of that one is named Jake Gomez.