The Marvel Cinematic Universe has without a doubt the biggest achievement in blockbuster filmmaking in decades – just remember how excited you were when Nick Fury popped up after the credits of Iron Man, and how incredible the idea of an Avengers film seemed then.
But it hasn’t been all plain sailing. The main reason Marvel have made household names out of previously lesser-known heroes like Thor and Iron Man was because the movie rights to their biggest properties, like the X-Men and Spider-Man, had already been sold off to other movie studios. When Marvel decided to start making their own movies, they could only use the characters that they hadn’t optioned yet.
Last year’s Civil War marked a turning point though: after the relative familiar of the Sony’s Andrew Garfield-starring Spider-Man films, they drew up a deal with Marvel to let Spidey appear alongside Captain America and Iron Man, and in his own standalone film (Spider-Man: Homecoming) coming this summer.
Daredevil also previously appeared in a 2003 Ben Affleck-starring movie, but it flopped Marvel regained the right to have him appear on as part of their Netflix shows.
But what about the other eally big names – eg the X-Men and the Fantastic Four? Comic book fans have been getting very excited about the possibilities. And it seems so have Marvel themselves.
In an interview with Jeremy Lasky of Perception (the company that designed the Marvel Studios’ opening logo), Marvel head honcho Kevin Feige was asked about a quote from Hugh Jackman saying that he would only play Wolverine again if it was in an Avengers movie. So is Feige trying to get those characters back?
This what he said:
Yes, of course! My goal is to replicate the experience that comic book fans have reading the books up on the screen and we’ve been able to accomplish that beyond my wildest dreams over the last ten years. And certainly, including Spidey in Civil War, in the upcoming Infinity War, is yet another dream that I didn’t even dare to talk about publicly because I thought the odds of it were very slim. So, no plans beyond that for the few remaining characters that aren’t already in the MCU but never say never. Who knows what can happen in the future?
Of course, for that to happen, the current rights holders would have to give them up, or at least come a deal with Marvel. The last Fantastic Four movie was a notorious bomb, so we could see that happening. But will Deadpool and Logan recently breathing life back into the X-Men franchise, it’s unlikely Fox would let that cash cow go.
Still, we can dream about a Wolverine versus the Hulk film though.
