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Fox and Marvel could be set to make a deal that would see the Fantastic Four rights return to the comic books studio and become part of The Avengers universe.
With the creation of a shared universe, Marvel has changed the superhero-movie landscape forever. Beginning with Iron Man, all the characters from various Marvel properties were able to exist in the same world.
It creates higher stakes, allows incredible team ups through The Avengers and you just don’t know who might show up in any film. In addition it creates an added investment for the audience and added box office for the studio. Without The Avengers connection it doesn’t seem like Thor would have the same mass appeal that it did.
Unfortunately Marvel aren’t quite playing with a full deck of characters. Back when the company was facing bankruptcy, they sold the rights of certain characters to a variety of studios. The most notable missing links are Spider-Man, currently owned by Sony and The Fantastic Four and Daredevil owned by Fox.
However, these rights have an expiry date and if the studios don’t start making the films within a certain time frame, then the rights revert back to Marvel and it’s unlikely they’ll ever sell these valuable characters again.
Fox has been developing a Daredevil movie for some time but production has to begin before October 10th this year or rights will revert. Now, according to Collider, it seems that Fox might also be willing to give up on it’s proposed Fantastic Four reboot from Chronicle director Josh Trank and return the rights to Marvel.
While Daredevil has served on the Avengers, the Man without Fear is hardly a key player. The possibilities that open up with Reed Richards and friends in the shared universe are far greater and would tie in nicely with Hank Pym as Ant Man, set to launch in 2014. With the Marvel Universe now exploring space through Guardians of the Galaxy, there are plenty of opportunities to meet Fantastic Four bad guys Galactacus and the Silver Surfer.
Fox had their chance and failed to make box office gold with the Ben Affleck starring Daredevil in 2003 and only had moderate success with two horribly miscast Fantastic Four films in 2005 and 2007.
There needs to be a good reason for these reboots to exist and find an audience and bringing them into the Marvel universe seems like the best bet. Hopefully the studios can work out there differences and realise the best way to make money is to become one family and create a shared universe of epic epicness.
Would you like to see Fantastic Four return to Marvel? Tell us what you’re thinking below. Tell us about anything at all. We just want to chat.
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August 7, 2012
Movies