You would be hard pressed to find a series of films that has come to define the modern era more so than the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). With characters like Iron Man, Captain America, Black Widow, and Thor, Marvel has created a film anthology unlike any other that came before it. Its true success lies in its ability to be all-inclusive—the films are not strictly made for fans of the comic books, but they certainly have enough in there for those fans to appreciate. However, avid fans of Marvel comics have always had one major complaint: major characters are missing from films that Marvel Studios doesn’t have the rights to.
Marvel Studios has slowly been reacquiring rights to their displaced characters. This started with The Hulk, who Universal still owns the rights to, but Marvel struck a deal that allowed them to use him in team-up films like The Avengers. Marvel was able to make a similar deal with Sony, allowing them to bring Spider-Man into their films. In a nutshell, both deals were made so that Universal and Sony keep the profits and get distribution rights to any Hulk or Spider-Man solo movies, while Marvel Studios keeps the profits and distribution rights to any team-up movies involving the characters. These were giant steps forward for Marvel, but something else has always been missing.
Fox owns the rights to other Marvel characters and concepts that fans have been pining to see in the MCU. Some of these characters include all of the members of the X-Men, all of their villains like Magneto and Apocalypse, and the concept of “Mutants.” For years, it has merely been a pipe dream to have these characters exist in a film universe alongside the Avengers. That is, until the last few weeks.
Rumors of 21^st Century Fox potentially buying Disney’s film studio, 20^th Century Fox, began right around Thanksgiving. Rumors slowed down a bit after that, until reports on Tuesday, Dec. 5 stated that a deal between Disney and Fox was close, and could come as soon as a week from the time of the report.
Fans will remember that Fox has been releasing Fantastic Four movies, even as recently as 2015, which makes this deal tricky. One would think that Fox owns the rights to those characters as well, but sadly they do not. Fox has a contract with Constantin Film, a German production company, that allows them to make and distribute films in the US. If Disney were to purchase 20^th Century Fox, this contract would be null and void, meaning Constantin would have the sole rights to the characters. However, it is safe to assume that Constantin has no intention of using these characters, so they could probably make a deal with Disney similar to the one they had with Fox.
A deal of this magnitude has major implications on the future of the MCU. After 10 years of buildup toward the Infinity War story arc, many wondered what the next step for Marvel Studios would be. How could they possibly follow that? A good way to do this would be by bringing in the X-Men and Fantastic Four. All the characters that Marvel now has access to, all the ones originally thought up by Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, and Jack Kirby in a small office in New York, can finally be put together and utilized on the big screen together. This would be a landmark moment for all comic book fans, and we can only hope and wait that this isn’t just a dream, but a moment only so heroic and triumphant that it had to come from the pages of a comic book.