'Spider-Man 3' will feature a Marvel/Netflix superhero, Kevin Smith says

All online rumors about future comic book movies should be taken with oh so many grains of salt. But when Kevin Smith, best known as the director of Clerks and Chasing Amy, shares a very interesting rumor about a future Marvel movie you might as well order up some fries to go with it.

In the May 16 episode of Smith's podcast, a geek talk show he hosts with writer Marc Bernardin, Smith dropped some rumors he claims he saw online. Smith didn't cite his exact sources (and it's now hard to track down), but the Silent Bob actor claims to believe that Charlie Cox's Daredevil, from the Netflix series, will appear in the next Spider-Man movie starring Tom Holland. The film's title is not yet publicly known.

“I heard another piece of good fucking news,” Smith said on his podcast. “Did you hear that Spider-Man, the new Spider-Man movie, gonna have a lawyer in it? A famous Marvel Universe lawyer?"

When Bernardin questioned if it's She-Hulk, another Marvel lawyer who will have her own TV show She-Hulk on Disney+, Smith coyly replied, "Another famous..."

After the Scum & Villainy Cantina in Los Angeles erupted in laughter, Smith continued, "Charlie Cox, they ’re bringing in as Matt Murdock. That’s been the rumor online and they say that’s like the one, that like Marvel’s like, god damn it how did that get out?”

"If they do that," Smith added, "Fucking chef's kiss, man."

He's not wrong. Bringing Charlie Cox's Daredevil, a character Cox played for three stellar seasons in the Marvel TV series on Netflix, would be an incredible thing for fans to see after the Defenders (and Punisher) failed to show up in the big battle of Avengers: Endgame. Despite the popular characters existing in the same universe as the Avengers, fans never got to see those islands build a bridge. Until, maybe, now.

Smith offered up a little more insight into the rumor. "Because now the rumor behind that rumor, once they introduce him in Spider-Man, Daredevil's gonna get his own movie with Charlie Cox playing him. Same fucking cast. That would be so smart. Oh my god," gushed Smith. "They're opening up the Marvel fucking toy chest right now. It's not going to be the same six fuckers all the time. They're opening the fuck up, man. It sounds like Daredevil is gonna get his own movie again."

Bernardin, who eats up the rumor, then speculates some potential crossovers.

"And I think the super exciting thing is that after Daredevil, Luke Cage is viable, and then the Punisher is viable. And the Punisher v Spider-Man is a legit fucking thing. Dude."

You can watch the episode of Fat Man on Batman below. The rumor talk begins at 1:08:20.

Let's back up. It's unknown where Kevin Smith learned that Cox may appear in Spider-Man 3. Smith says he saw it online, and other less-than-credible rumor sites have written that Cox's Daredevil will appear in a future Marvel movie. But it is noteworthy that Smith, a major voice in the geek movie space, is willing to buy into it. That alone will now cycle through the online spaces, thus entering the discourse, and now Kevin Feige will have to field questions about Daredevil at the next movie premiere. (Which, depending on how the coronavirus pans out, won't be for a while.) That's certainly one way of making a rumor come true.

Still, Smith is right in that it would be awesome. For three seasons, Marvel and Netflix produced the perfect weekend binge in a gritty show that took the superhero genre to darker territory — sometimes literally. A near-perfect live-action adaptation of the Frank Miller, Brian Michael Bendis, and Ed Brubaker stories (and even Kevin Smith, who wrote Daredevil in the early 2000s), the series is a violent contrast to shining blockbusters like Captain America.

Despite critical acclaim for its final season, the show was canceled in 2018 amidst Disney ending its partnership with Neflix to power up its own service, Disney+. But a show like Daredevil simply can't exist on Disney+.

Which brings us to now, with Kevin Smith claiming Daredevil may live on in the big screen. But where the rumor began doesn't matter. It's out now. Marvel will have to contain it, debunk it, not address it, or — and this one is a biggie — take notice of how much Marvel fans want to see it.

Spider-Man 3 is scheduled for release on July 16, 2021.