Now that characters pertaining to the X-Men, Fantastic Four and Deadpool franchises reside under Disney’s umbrella and all that jazz involving Fox lies in the past, it’s not like we can just wipe it from our memory. Plus, it’s always fun learning new bits of trivia.
As you may already know, some characters existed within a legal grey area and were fair game for both Disney and Fox. Chief among them were Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch, the former of which wound up having two live action versions of him existing at the same time. The alien race known as the Skrulls were also of this ilk, though they wound up being called something else in Dark Phoenix.
Nick Fury, however, wasn’t residing over at Fox, though they did try to get him at one point. Believe it or not, Andre Braugher’s character in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer was originally intended to be Fury, but Fox didn’t want to pay the extra money required to gain the rights to him. Subsequently, he morphed into becoming General Hager – even if some Nick Fury dialogue from Ultimate Extinction #2 did carry over.
In case you were wondering, the change was made quite early in the scripting stage, so it’s not like director Tim Story and his cohorts were left scrambling when cameras were ready to roll. Still, it’s interesting to learn how another filmmaking team were interested in adapting the version of Nick Fury familiar to the Ultimate Universe not long after his inception.
Speaking of which, the black Nick Fury created by Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch was actually patterned after Samuel L. Jackson, so it’s only fitting that very actor wound up portraying him on the big screen. Had things worked out differently for Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, one can only wonder how the Marvel Cinematic Universe would’ve diverged.
