Ever since Bryan Singer’s X-Men resurrected a genre that was dangerously close to fading into obscurity 20 years ago, the comic book movie has become Hollywood’s most popular pastime, and the bubble shows no signs of bursting anytime soon. Almost every major Marvel hero has been the subject of at least one big screen adaptation, but the launch of Iron Man in 2008 saw the upstart Marvel Studios kick off their unprecedented shared universe model.
Gathering all of the marquee characters they had at their disposal under one roof and tying them all together in a single overarching narrative, the Marvel Cinematic Universe quickly became the biggest franchise in the industry. Of course, Fox’s X-Men series was out of the gate years beforehand, and despite the wildly fluctuating quality of the films, it remained one of the most popular brands among audiences.
The Fantastic Four, on the other hand, not so much. Marvel’s First Family have been the subject of four movies to date, all of which could be generously described as mediocre at best. Since Disney purchased Fox, though, the rights to both legendary teams now rest in the hands of Kevin Feige, and while the reboots are a while away yet, Disney Plus has started adding several X-Men and Fantastic Four titles to the library in recent months.
Presumably in an effort to distance the Fox movies from their in-house projects, however, the Mouse House’s streaming service has rebranded those blockbusters under the Marvel Legacy banner. Now that the defunct franchises have been separated from the rest of the platform’s comic book efforts, any confusion will surely be avoided and Marvel Studios can plow forward on their reboots of each of the properties with both previous incarnations now distinct from the MCU on Disney Plus.