The X-Men and Fantastic Four are finally coming to the Marvel Cinematic Universe… eventually. While Disney’s acquisition of Fox – and thus their gaining of all the Marvel character rights previously held by Fox – went through a few months ago, we’ve previously heard that we shouldn’t expect the Marvel’s mutants and the First Family to show up in the Marvel Cinematic Universe for at least five years.
That’s a lot of time for the folks at Marvel Studios to come up with ways to properly introduce the new characters into their existing universe. And that’s apparently quite a fun task according to what studio boss Kevin Feige told Fandango.
It’s still early days, but it’s been a fun exercise, and it’s one, by the way, that we’ve been doing for years. Every development meeting starts with cool ideas and fun ideas, and our wheels are always turning in terms of what if… to use a Marvel publishing term. What if we did this? What if we did that? What if we had access to such and such characters? That’s how Spider-Man: Homecoming came together in the first place, and it’s fun to now be in this position with the Fox characters, too, because if we come up with a great “What If” we can actually do it.
When Marvel lands on that “What if”, would they possibly introduce the new characters in other films first like they did with Black Panther and Spider-Man in Captain America: Civil War or hop straight to their own features?
You know, oftentimes it just comes down to a specific character in a specific story and a specific way to introduce them. So sometimes, like with Spider-Man and Black Panther, that made sense. Then, other times, with characters like Iron Man, Captain Marvel, Thor, Doctor Strange, Ant-Man… it’s fun to introduce them in their own movies first. So it just depends on the story we’re trying to tell.
For one character that’s now back in Marvel’s hands though, we already know how they won’t be introduced. When asked by ComicBook.com about recent rumors that Deadpool would maybe show up in a third Spider-Man film or maybe in one of the planned Disney+ TV series, Feige was pretty straightforward in his response.
No, I mean we’re certainly having conversations about the future of all of those Fox properties. How to weave them in and when to weave them in. That one, in particular, is not the case.
How ever these characters eventually end up in the MCU, it’s just good to know that they will eventually get there.
Last Updated: June 21, 2019
