With Marvel’s roster of superheroes spread between 20th Century Fox (X-Men, The Fantastic Four), Sony (Spider-Man) and Marvel Studios (everybody else), it looks unlikely that we’ll ever get to see a truly definitive Marvel Universe on the big screen, regardless of how many times Andrew Garfield (Spider-Man) and Hugh Jackman (Wolverine) express their interest in teaming up with The Avengers. However, according to Jackman, a crossover between Fox and Sony was on the cards back at the start of the superhero movie boom, with the star telling The Huffington Post that Logan almost popped up alongside Tobey Maguire’s wall-crawler back in 2002 with Sam Raimi’s first Spider-Man movie:
“In the first Spider-Man – Kevin Feige reminded me of this – we really tried to get me to come on and do something, whether it was a gag or just to walk through the shot or something. The problem was, we couldn’t find the suit. The suit was stuck in some thing. And so when they were in New York when I was there, we couldn’t get it together. So, you know, I actually asked some high level people about it. Because the optimist in me goes, ‘Why not? Why can’t we do it? You know, a split cast or whatever?’ And someone reminded that the amount of money Fox paid compared to the amount of money Disney paid is very different [laughs]. So how you split that pie up? God knows. But in the comic books, what’s great about it is they’re just mashing together all the time — and it’s awesome. And people are like, ‘Yeah, well, let’s get this one with that!’ And, you know, I still think, one day, there may be an ability to do it.”
As Jackman says, the big sticking point seems to be the runaway success of Disney and Marvel Studios’ Cinematic Universe, but if there was movement once, then perhaps a Marvel Team-Up between Sony and 20th Century Fox isn’t beyond the realms of possibility.
Hugh Jackman is set to don the claws as Wolverine for a seventh time next may with Bryan Singer’s X-Men: Days of Future Past, while Andrew Garfield’s web-slinger will swing back into cinemas in April with The Amazing Spider-Man 2 ahead of The Amazing Spider-Man 3 in 2016 and The Amazing Spider-Man 4 in 2018. Meanwhile Marvel Studios will further expand its Cinematic Universe with Thor: The Dark World, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, The Avengers: Age of Ultron and Ant-Man between now and 2015 with three further mystery movies set for 2016 and 2017.
Originally published September 10, 2013. Updated April 11, 2018.
