Originally published April 8, 2017. Updated April 16, 2018.
While 20th Century Fox’s X-Men movies haven’t always been met with the best of reactions from fans and critics, there’s no denying they’ve been incredibly successful at the box office, with the ten films to date having grossed just shy of $5 billion worldwide.
Details have now emerged regarding the initial 1993 deal between Fox and Marvel, with the Industry Focus podcast (via CBM) revealing that the studio snapped up the rights to the mutant superheroes for just $2.6 million. The deal also included 2% of worldwide ticket sales, reportedly only on the first X-Men movie from 2000, which means Marvel would have pocketed around $6 million in total.
It’s worth nothing that while Marvel was enjoying a run of success during the comic book boom of the early 90s, superhero movies were really in their infancy at the time of the deal, and the idea of self-financing a slate of movies would have been unheard of at that point.
Still, it certainly sounds like a pretty sweet deal for Fox, especially considering last year’s Deadpool is said to have earned the studio $322.2 million in pure profit alone. Ten films later the franchise is stronger than ever, and several future instalments are in various stages of development including Deadpool 2, X-Men: The New Mutants, X-Men: Supernova, X-Force and Gambit.
