It appears Marvel Entertainment stopped Kevin Feige from using characters like Blade, Ghost Rider, and Daredevil in the MCU when they got the rights back. Marvel Studios has found great success turning its lesser-known characters like Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America into pop culture icons. Yet this all came down to necessity and practicality as at the time these were the characters that Marvel Studios had access to as some of their bigger character rights were tied up at other studios.
In the late 90’s and early 2000’s, Marvel was able to stave off bankruptcy by selling the film rights to their popular characters to various studios, and the small profits from those films as well as a boost in merchandise and comics around that character helped Marvel recover. Blade was at New Line Cinema, while 20th Century Fox had Daredevil and Elektra, Lionsgate had The Punisher, and Columbia Pictures had the rights to Ghost Rider and Luke Cage. Eventually, the rights to these characters reverted back to Marvel in 2012 (Blade, Daredevil, and Elektra) and 2013 (Ghost Rider, Luke Cage, and The Punisher). At the time it just seemed like a natural assumption that these characters could now be incorporated into the MCU and join The Avengers in their eventual fight against Thanos, but that was not to be the case.
