The Marvel Cinematic Universe has already brought more comic book characters to the big screen than ever in the history of comic books, and even with the likes of Moonknight, She-Hulk, and other lesser known heroes working their way into the ever expanding world that started with the simple story of a self-confident billionaire who built himself a very elaborate Halloween costume, fans are constantly digging into the depths of Marvel's history to ask who else could be brought into the MCU in future. Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn recently fielded a question about one of these characters when asked about the possibility of him writing and directing a movie based on Rom: Spaceknight.

"Marvel owns the story from the comics; Hasbro owns the character," Gunn said in response to the question. "So, unless something changes, the original Spaceknights tale with Rom can never be told."

Following Disney's acquisition of Fox, which brought many of their "lost" Marvel characters back into the fold, there is nothing to suggest that Disney won't continue to drag as many Marvel strays as possible back under their control to be used as and when they wish. That is not to say they are about to take over Hasbro, but considering their current partnership with Sony over the rights of Spider-Man, there is always a way around these things. It should also be considered that, as Gunn almost alludes to, the "original" Spaceknights tale cannot be told, but that would also suggest that if they really wanted to, Marvel Studios could simply recreate the Spaceknights with new characters.

For anyone who has never heard of this exceptionally obscure part of Marvel's history, Rom the Space Knight was a character licences to Marvel for a comic book series back in 1979. However, the character is not a Marvel original and was actually owned by board game makers Parker Brothers, who are now under the Hasbro banner. Like many toy lines of the time, such as He-Man and My Little Pony, Parker Brothers wanted a tie in to help sell more of the line of figures created around the character of Rom, which was their first attempt at such a figure. Marvel's comic series delved into the origin of Rom, a human from a planet called Galador. When his planet was invaded by aliens, Rom and many of his fellow humans were transformed into cyborgs called Spaceknights to fight off the alien invasion. While they won the war to save their own planet, the aliens, known as Dire Wraiths, spread across the galaxy, leading Rom to set out to protect other planets including Earth from their attack.

Over the course of its six year run, Rom: Spaceknight became a fully-fledged member of the Marvel Universe, and therefore will be seen by those who remember him as having huge potential to appear in a movie somewhere in the future. Unfortunately there is another complication which has already been giving Marvel a headache for a few years which would likely end any current hopes of the character turning up in the MCU.

30 years after his last appearance, the publishing rights for Rom were picked up by IDW Publishing in 2016, who delivered a mini-series featuring the character and 15 issue run simply called Rom. This changing of hands meant that Marvel's loss of the rights also lost them the ability to republish any of their comics to have featured the character, which included several crossovers with characters such as The Incredible Hulk, Iron Fist and Power Man among others, which has led to any reprints of the issues featuring him being re-edited or having the story complete omitted.

While it is unlikely that Rom will be arriving in the MCU anytime soon under the direction of James Gunn, it is good to know that there are people willing to dig deep into the Marvel archives to try and discover just who could be joining Marvels' biggest heroes in the future.