Marvel fans around the world have been waiting for years now to see characters like the X-Men and Fantastic Four enter the MCU. It would be a dream come true for a lot of people and would result in an absolutely epic team-up film, one which would no doubt destroy the box office. So, why hasn’t it happened yet? The answer, as frustrating as it may be, is actually quite simple: it comes down to rights.
As you most likely know, Fox owns the rights for the X-Men and Fantastic Four while Marvel holds the rights for characters like The Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy, etc. As such, it makes it extremely difficult for the heroes to appear in each other’s films. Not too long ago, a historic deal was struck between Marvel and Sony to allow Spider-Man to enter the MCU, leading fans to think that Fox may eventually cave in as well. According to Kevin Feige though, it’s just not going to happen.
While speaking with Variety, the Marvel head honcho revealed that “it’s an impossibility at this juncture.” While not terribly surprising, this is still disappointing to hear. After all, with Fox planning to reboot the X-Men after the series started dwindling in popularity and box office business due to the middling Apocalypse, fans were hopeful that they may eventually go the route that Sony did. Then again, we all thought the same thing with the Fantastic Four as well when that film flopped several years ago – and Fox is still holding on tight to those rights.
We know that Marvel and Fox recently made a deal that involved trading characters for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and Deadpool, which had us hopeful that perhaps their relationship was getting better. While it very well may be, it seems as if it’s still not strong enough for them to come to terms to allow crossovers between characters like the X-Men and The Avengers.
For now, we’ll just have to be content with the aforementioned heroes existing in separate cinematic universes – as frustrating as that may be.
