By It’s official! The Disney-FOX merger is complete. The companies have formed together to make an entity possibly more powerful than Voltron. Well let’s not go that far, but, hey, Marvel has now gotten back the rights to oh so many of their most well-known characters. The X-Men, The Fantastic Four, and Deadpool are just a few of the faces we may see popping up in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the future.
This is exciting news for fans of the MCU as they will get to see the X-Men exist in the same cinematic universe as the Avengers, sadly still no Hugh Jackman though. As exciting as this is, there are still many hurdles to navigate until we finally get to see some of those much-beloved characters take part in all the fun. There are obvious issues of likely not having scripts and directors ready for such an event. I’m sure they have a roadmap of where they’d like to introduce these characters, but it’ll have to be down the line a bit. Kevin Feige will be the driving force of when and where this happens once it is possible. The earliest predictions put this date around 2021.
2021 you say?! At earliest you say?!
Yes, the best case scenario is predicting around that timeline. This is kind of a bummer for most fans since they likely believed that these characters would be joining the MCU much sooner than that now that Marvel has the rights to use such tentpole characters again. But why is taking so long? There are legal issues that have to be worked through by all parties involved with the respective franchises.
Everyone knows how fun that can be, right?
The short story is that there are producers with standing contracts for the X-Men movies and others who had been contracted for more movies under the FOX banner. It is not known if these people will stay on board or not, but Disney has met with some of them to discuss their future. Ominous much?
And if that wasn’t enough for you then there are the movies they already have yet to release, in production, or about to begin production that may need to run their course first. Dark Phoenix is possibly the last big X-Men movie to be released outside of the MCU with The New Mutants future still uncertain. Dark Phoenix seems to be having a rough go of it and has been continually pushed back. This hasn’t helped the hype surrounding the movie, but it has theoretically impacted when the X-Men will be able to pal around with whichever Avengers make it out of Endgame. The New Mutants, on the other hand, has been pushed back even more times and may be heading to a streaming or on-demand option, if the House of Mouse isn’t happy with what they have.
Luckily for those of us who are not yet sick of seeing Marvel movies demolish the box office, Marvel has enough projects on their way or in the pipeline to satisfy us all for the foreseeable future.
Now if only Hugh Jackman would come out of retirement…
X-Men Franchise Poised for Shake-Up as Fox’s Marvel Heroes Migrate to Disney [The Hollywood Reporter]