Two American super-heroes are quite popular in other parts of the world in syndication but don't seem to be popular in the US itself. One is the Phantom, and the other is Mandrake the Magician.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man...

There has been a (lousy) Phantom movie, and a Mandrake one is finally in production.

Though Superman/Batman comics were available in India, when I was growing up, Phantom and Mandrake were 10x more popular for whatever reason.

The Phantom would need to be significantly updated to not be offensive to Africans, but Mandrake I think would be awesome out of the box. It's like Harry Potter with adult characters. There's a College of Magic instead of Hogwart's School, an evil twin, a Dumbledore like figure (Theon)... lots of potential for a great franchise.

The Phantom... if rebooted, it would need a really good reinvention. But there's a lot of potential. He's like a bad-ass Batman operating in conflict zones around much more gritty-realistic adventures than the Batman himself. He usually takes on real-world type criminals instead of costumed nemesis figures.