Marvel Studios has made a great number of strides in reacquiring characters previously licensed to other studios, with the rights to the likes of Daredevil, Blade, The Punisher, Namor the Sub-Mariner and Ghost Rider all reverting back to Marvel’s ownership, and a deal struck with Sony to bring Spider-Man into the MCU fold.
There are however two gaping omissions preventing Marvel Studios from replicating its comic book universe on the big screen, with 20th Century Fox still holding on to the rights to X-Men and Fantastic Four. And while Marvel chief Kevin Feige has previously ruled out a similar deal to Spider-Man between Marvel and Fox, his “grand plan” is to eventually see every Marvel character back home.
“Yes of course,” Feige told Perception (via Screen Rant) when asked if he’d like to see the X-Men alongside The Avengers. “My goal is to replicate the experience that, you know, 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. Spidey in Civil War and 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 right now for any of the few remaining characters that aren’t already in the MCU, but I always say ‘never say never,’ who knows what can happen in the future?”
Fox is currently enjoying a run of critical and commercial success with the X-Men franchise, and has just recently set dates for Deadpool 2, X-Men: The New Mutants and X-Men: Dark Phoenix, so it would seem very unlikely that the mutant superheroes will be heading back home to Marvel any time soon (unless Disney forks out a fortune for the privilege, of course). However, the Fantastic Four franchise seems dead in the water following the disastrous 2015 reboot from director Josh Trank, so it certainly wouldn’t be a surprise if Reed Richards and company ended up as part of the MCU.
