The movie rights to the various comic book franchise scattered across Hollywood is a legal and political minefield, and one that would make your head hurt if you thought about it for too long. For example, Marvel Studios are free to use the Hulk however they see fit but can’t have him headline his own solo movie, while they had to borrow Spider-Man from Sony to reboot the web-slinger into the MCU, but they do own the TV rights so they can make as many animated shows featuring the character as they want without having to seek approval.
When Disney completed their takeover of Fox, a lot of fans were expecting the dozen X-Men movies to make their way to Disney Plus in the near future in order to bolster the streaming service’s library, but it isn’t that simple. In 2012, Fox struck a deal with HBO for the rights to screen a lot of their films, which included several installments in the X-Men series, but not all of them.
As a result, a lot of properties that Disney now own the rights to are currently streaming on HBO Max, and probably will be until the contract runs out in 2022. However, despite being available in some countries already due to the differences between domestic and international streaming licenses, several of Fox’s X-Men movies are finally heading to Disney Plus in the States over the next few months.
Here’s the full list:
- July 10th: X-Men: Days of Future Past
- July 17th: X-Men: Apocalypse
- August 7th: X-Men
- September 4th: The Wolverine
As you can see up above, next month brings with it the arrival of Days of Future Past and Apocalypse, with Bryan Singer’s 2000 original set for August and The Wolverine landing in September. While fans would be a lot happier if the entire twelve-movie series just debuted at the same time, things are never quite that simple in Hollywood, especially with the streaming wars raging on and getting fiercer than ever.
