What The Fox/Disney Deal Means For Marvel’s Future

Marvel Studios now officially owns X-Men and Fantastic Four as the Disney-Fox deal has finalized, and here’s what it means for the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The studio is currently focused on wrapping up Phase 3 of the MCU with Avengers: Endgame, but the now official deal immediately gives studio president Kevin Feige and his team of writers and producers, as well as upcoming directors, the ability to use several brand new characters.

The Disney-Fox deal has been in the works since late 2017, but Disney has been unable to legally touch any Fox film during that time. While there are several less than ideal results of the Disney-Fox deal (like approximately 10,000 losses), the one area that has continued to generate excitement for Marvel fans is the eventual possibility that the MCU will be able to incorporate some of Marvel’s biggest characters. The timing of this is almost perfect for the MCU as well, as Avengers: Endgame is expected to be the final appearance by several major stars, such as Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man and Chris Evans’ Captain America, and this influx of characters gives the MCU plenty of potential future stars.

Related: Marvel’s House of M Is How X-Men Can Join MCU In Phase 4

But, before the X-Men and Fantastic Four can be introduced in the MCU, there’s still some Fox-related business to take care of. Fox has Dark Phoenix and The New Mutants slated for summer releases this year, but these plans could change now that Disney is in charge. With the Disney-Fox deal officially done, let’s take a look at what it means for the MCU’s future.

• This Page: An X-Men Reboot Is Coming
• Page 2: The MCU Gains Access To (Almost) Every Marvel Character

All X-Men Heroes (Except Deadpool) Will Be Rebooted

One of the biggest implications of the Disney-Fox deal as it pertains to Marvel is the upcoming reboot. For the last 20 years, Fox has created a popular X-Men franchise in its own right, but one that’s impossible to work within the MCU. They’ve already had a soft reboot before that attempted to fix the messy continuity and X-Men timeline, and even though there are fan-favorite portrayals of iconic X-Men characters packed into these films (namely Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine), Marvel Studios will reboot all of these characters to fit them into the MCU. Well, almost all of them.

The lone exception here appears to be Ryan Reynolds’ foul-mouthed Deadpool, as recent reports indicate that Deadpool won’t be recast. With the first two Deadpool movies making over $1.6 billion at the box office combined, it’s a no-brainer for Disney and Marvel Studios to keep Reynolds around as the Merc with a Mouth. He’s also the perfect character to live on, as his fourth-wall-breaking tendencies will allow him to make fun of the merger itself, the new universe he lives in, and even make mention of how the MCU’s own Wolverine isn’t Jackman. It’s unclear if any fellow Deadpool characters will survive the transition, though, or if he will properly join the MCU – or not.

Related: How The Incredible Hulk May Have Set Up Wolverine In The MCU

Reynolds is already having fun with this new venture, too, as he celebrated the Disney-Fox deal closing with a picture of Deadpool in a school bus with the Mickey Mouse ears on. The biggest question that still somewhat lingers over Deadpool is the rating that his next appearance will have. Reynolds recently tested the waters of a PG-13 Deadpool 2 with a special cut that many viewed as a showing by him that Deadpool can work outside of an R-rating. However, Disney CEO Bob Iger has also said that any future Deadpool movies would likely maintain a R-rating and that they’ll just be extra careful to communicate with audiences that this isn’t the standard PG-13 MCU film audiences have seen for the last decade.

With Deadpool being the only one sticking around, this will mean that Dark Phoenix is the end of the main X-Men story Fox has been telling. Although the film was originally intended to be the beginning of a new trilogy of films focused even more on the younger heroes introduced in X-Men: Apocalypse, it will now serve as a conclusion to these characters’ arcs.

New Mutants May Go Straight To Streaming

It will, however, actually be the troubled The New Mutants that will be the final Fox X-Men movie yet to be released. The Josh Boone-directed film was originally scheduled to hit theaters in early 2018 but has since been delayed twice and currently has an August 2019 release date. However, this release date was set with the thought that massive reshoots would happen late last year or early this year, and those never happened and currently aren’t planned. With no reshoots done, The New Mutants is left in the same place it has been in for quite some time, and now Disney execs will be in charge of determining its future.

There have been several rumors that New Mutants could move to a streaming service, and that has been echoed in the latest report about the film’s future. An eventual debut on a streaming service is the best place for New Mutants at this point, with Hulu serving as a better landing spot than Disney Plus. The latter is expected to launch this fall and feature mostly family-friendly content, which New Mutants may not mesh with its horror approach. Hulu’s content is already more adult oriented and is an ideal fit. Regardless of which streaming service New Mutants ultimately calls home, this type of launch could allow Disney and Fox to reduce marketing costs on the film (maybe even making it a surprise launch to generate as much discussion as possible), while also avoiding a possible box office failure if it were to hit theaters.

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X-Men & Fantastic Four Will Join The MCU (Eventually)

Looking further ahead into the future, the biggest ramification of the Disney-Fox deal is that Marvel Studios will have control over the X-Men and Fantastic Four, with a reboot assuredly on the way – even if one hasn’t officially been announced so far. There’s no timetable yet for when these characters will begin to be integrated into the MCU, but it will happen at some point.

In terms of their standalone movies, the unofficial slate of films Marvel Studios is developing has given fans a decent understanding of what films they’ll release through 2021. Black Widow and The Eternals will film this year and be ready for 2020 debuts, while Black Panther 2, Doctor Strange 2, and Shang-Chi all have directors attached and appear to be aiming for 2021. With this timeline, recent reports have backed up the belief that no MCU solo X-Men or Fantastic Four film will hit theaters until 2021/2022 at the earliest.

Related: Marvel Shouldn’t Use Wolverine In A MCU Movie Until Phase 5

With Marvel Studios already largely shaping what Phase 4 will look like, any immediate usage of these new toys will have to be folded into existing projects in the meantime. That said, there’s no need to rush out these introductions either, and Marvel Studios may very well take a slower approach than many anticipated to bring the X-Men and Fantastic Four into the MCU. They did reboot Spider-Man with Sony just two years after The Amazing Spider-Man 2 hit theaters, but Marvel has complete control over these characters now, while they still have to share Spider-Man.

Additionally, Marvel Studios may also take a less conventional approach to these properties when they do decide to introduce them. Feige recently met with Noah Hawley about his Doctor Doom movie, and it would fascinating to see Marvel Studios use Doom as their first Fantastic Four character, while also properly establishing him as a supervillain for the future. Even if the studio does take a more traditional approach to the standalone titles, and the first films they make are proper solo reboot films for the X-Men and Fantastic Four, they will likely attempt to make them stand apart from what audiences have seen before. Feige has teased that he’s excited to use lesser known Marvel characters, which he’s found success doing in the past. This could mean a different X-Men team at the center of the story than fans are expecting or even kicking off the Fantastic Four with the Future Foundation forming.

Marvel Still Doesn’t Own Spider-Man, Hulk or Namor

The X-Men and Fantastic Four coming back home to Marvel Studios gives them control over almost every Marvel character ever created. But, previous deals with Sony and Universal still limit what Marvel Studios can and cannot do with some characters – namely Spider-Man, Hulk, and Namor.

As mentioned before, Spider-Man is only in the MCU now thanks to a deal agreed upon between Marvel Studios and Sony back in 2015. The deal allows Marvel to be very involved on the creative side and so Tom Holland’s version of Peter Parker can appear in films like Avengers: Infinity War, while fellow MCU stars like Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury can appear in Spider-Man: Far From Home. However, this deal reportedly ends after this summer’s sequel, but it’s expected to be extended. What could make the extension of this partnership more complicated is Sony’s own plans for the 900 Marvel characters they own the big screen rights to. After the success of Venom, they’re looking to create even more solo films (like Morbius), and desperately want Spider-Man to exist in the universe these films take place in. The next deal could ask for all of Sony’s Marvel productions to be set within the MCU.

Universal owning the distribution rights to Hulk and Namor is a bit less confusing, but still can limit what Marvel Studios can do. Any potential Hulk or Namor solo movie would first be offered to Universal for distribution, but Marvel Studios and Disney like to do that themselves and have distributed all of their own films (except Sony’s Spider-Man films) since Iron Man 3. While this may mean for the time being that Marvel Studios won’t make solo Hulk or Namor movies, it does allow these characters to be used in other non-starring films. This is how Hulk appeared in Thor: Ragnarok and continues to be part of the Avengers franchise and would be how Namor could be introduced in Black Panther 2 or any number of future projects.

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Clearly, the Disney-Fox deal is huge for the future of the MCU and will drastically change it in the years to come. The impact may not be immediately clear, but it won’t be too long before mutants and Marvel’s first family are running around the MCU and likely crossing over with each other as well as other MCU stars like Captain Marvel, Black Panther, and Doctor Strange.

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