With Disney purchasing Fox Studios, the House of the Mouse will be getting the film rights to the X-Men, Deadpool, Wolverine, Fantastic Four and all the related characters.
While many fans have been wanting the X-Men to be a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe for years, a bonus the X-Men were never in the MCU has led to Kevin Feige going with “B-list” characters from the Marvel stable.
Case in point is Iron Man, which wasn’t as well known as the X-Men or Wolverine, but became a blockbuster smash hit under Feige and Robert Downey Jr.
Now everybody knows who Iron Man is.
Ditto for the Guardians of the Galaxy.
Prior to the Guardians of the Galaxy movie, not many fans (save those who regularly visited Cosmic Book News) knew about Bill Rosemann, Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning’s Marvel COSMIC team; however, obviously things have changed with the movies.
Now director James Gunn admits the Guardians of the Galaxy movie may have never been if the X-Men were already a part of the MCU.
“It’s a hard question. Kevin Feige was into the idea of Guardians because of his deep love of Star Wars and space operas. But the Marvel Studios schedule might have been too glutted with content/movies and it would have never been made,” Gunn posted on Twitter in reply to a fan’s question.
James Gunn is absolutely correct in that the Guardians of the Galaxy movie may never have been made simply by the fact that the X-Men are so popular. The X-Men comics at one time were actually more popular than the Avengers (and arguably still are).
The MCU might have been more of an X-Men-centric universe than Avengers. Just think, instead of Iron Man, Doctor Strange, Ant-Man and Guardians of the Galaxy, the MCU might have featured movies with Wolverine, Cable and Deadpool.
The sentiment actually echoes Logan director James Mangold’s own thoughts about Disney purchasing Fox in that he thinks it could mean less movies could be made.
“If they’re actually changing their mandate, if what they’re supposed to do alters, that would be sad to me because it just means less movies,” Mangold said. “I just hope what we end up with is going to be a positive in terms of movies.”
