Marvel And Fox Partnership? No, It’s Never Happening [Rumors]
Fans would love to see Marvel Studios and Twentieth Century Fox put their differences aside and work together. They could bring the X-Men into the Marvel Cinematic Universe; Feige and company could help Fox creatively, making sure their X-Men property is the best it can be. The thing is, though, that is never going to happen.
Sadly, there is now a small rumor, if it can even be called a rumor, suggesting the slightest possibility that comic book fans can see Fox and Marvel teaming up somewhere down the line in the future. This rumor was brought up during the Collider Heroes podcast by Matt Key, when he and a couple of the other hosts were discussing X-Men: Apocalypse and the future of the franchise.
“I’ve heard from a few of my sources, my little birds, that Fox and Marvel have… kind of talked, but not really, but like there’s interest from Fox, like, ‘Ooh, y’know, what they did with Sony and Spider-Man is actually pretty cool, like, maybe…’ We’re years away from that ever possibly happening… but I think that’s what it would take… Fox joining hands with Marvel. I think that’s what it would take.”
Is the X-Men franchise in trouble? I would say that it is, but I highly doubt Fox is thinking the same thing. Deadpool was a ridiculously huge success, having earned more at the worldwide box office than X-Men: Days of Future Past, which is really saying something. If anything, they could just cross Deadpool over with the regular X-Men and boom, they get a boost in their ticket sales.
Even X-Men: Days of Future Past couldn’t cross over or reach $1 billion at the worldwide box office when it was released. Days of Future Past only grossed $747,862,775 worldwide. Now that I think about it, not one of these X-Men movies has ever hit $1 billion on their own, not one. The franchise has been going for 16 years. If it hasn’t been a problem now, I don’t really see it being a problem in the future.
They don’t have to give the rights up. There are so many different X-Men iterations and runs in the comics: X-Force, X-Factor, New Mutants, etc. Fox could continue making movies based on these Mutants for the next several years. They have so many different options, like, for example, this Gambit solo film they’re trying to get off the ground. Along with the upcoming Legion television series. Sony didn’t have these options.
Take a look back at the many on-screen incarnations of the X-Men over the years. https://t.co/aUqPeAtv0T pic.twitter.com/Hk88pNlbgH
— IMDb (@IMDb) June 23, 2016
Sony only has Spider-Man and they gave up the rights to Ghost Rider. We’ve already seen them spit out rumors about an Aunt May movie, and Drew Goddard was working on a Sinister Six movie. Prior to the deal with Marvel, they were trying to expand the Spider-Man universe so that they could keep making movies and keep the rights. But, eventually, they realized that by working with Marvel, they could achieve that goal with much less effort.
Fantastic Four would be the only property that could maybe inspire Fox to either give up the rights or cut some sort of deal similar to the one between Sony and Marvel. In all likelihood, Fox made that disastrous 2015 Fantastic Four film just out of spite.
Where X-Men: Apocalypse Leaves The X-Men – https://t.co/nUzddvSgFI pic.twitter.com/AiCCVM4vVv
— Screen Rant (@screenrant) June 25, 2016
If X-Men: Apocalypse isn’t as big of a hit as Fox would like it to be, Fox will just make some small adjustments and keep going. They’re not going to cave in and give the rights up, or cut some sort of deal with Marvel. Sure, the X-Men could be handled better if Fox had Marvel Studios involved on the creative side, much like Sony’s deal with Marvel. But Marvel and Fox hate each other.
Marvel sold the movie rights to their characters when they were about to go bankrupt in the ’90s. Leading up to this, Marvel Entertainment put a deal together with Fox to produce an X-Men film, and the deal was pretty terrible. These deals were not made in Marvel’s favor at all. If Fox got the film rights to X-Men, for a ridiculously cheap price, why would they ever give the rights back when they’re making so much money?
[Photo by Jesse Grant/Getty Images for Disney]
