With the Disney-Fox deal having recently gone through, the X-Men and Fantastic Four are now with Marvel Studios. While promoting The Avengers: Endgame, writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely are asked what would they like to see next for the next three phases of the MCU, with Markus mentioning the former Fox-Marvel characters where he hints they will be a lot different.
“It’ll be fascinating to see what Kevin Feige does with the properties he’s now getting from the Fox merger with X-Men and Fantastic Four,” Markus tells the LA Times. “And to see what the MCU version of those things is, because I very much doubt it will be something that resembles what you’ve seen before. So that will be very exciting.”
Depending on what you thought of the Fox movies, Markus’ comments may be a good or bad thing. Characters like Wolverine and Deadpool were arguably handled pretty well by Fox, but not so much for the Fantastic Four characters.
Interestingly enough, a rumor surfaced back in January that fans might not like what Kevin Feige and Marvel Studios are going to do with Wolverine in the MCU, possibly suggesting a “Captain Marvel” approach to the characters.
The latest Feige has to say on the X-Men and Fantastic Four is that they are years away from becoming a part of the MCU (Fox’s Dark Phoenix comes out in June and New Mutants is supposed to be released in August).
“It’ll be a while. It’s all just beginning and the five-year plan that we’ve been working on, we were working on before any of that was set,” said Feige last month. “So really it’s much more, for us, less about specifics of when and where [the X-Men will appear] right now and more just the comfort factor and how nice it is that they’re home. That they’re all back. But it will be a very long time.”
Feige also said in a separate interview: “The specifics of what it means remains to be seen, but overall it’s wonderful and it feels like these characters have come home. It will be nice to have what every other [intellectual property] holder that I can think of has, which is access to all their IP. Imagine if Donald Duck was at another studio. Imagine if Goofy or Moana were someplace else and you didn’t have access to them even though they are yours.”
Regarding how the X-Men and Fantastic Four could make their way into the MCU remains to be seen, but a big clue may have come about in The Avengers: Endgame, which is touched upon in the new Spider-Man: Homecoming trailer.
The Avengers: Endgame apparently caused alternate timelines, creating the Multiverse within the MCU. The Spider-Man: Far From Home trailer has Mysterio from a different universe, so it is possible the X-Men and Fantastic Four characters could come to the MCU in similar fashion, meaning they will be from an alternate universe as well (which could also explain why Markus says they will so different than what has come before).
