Home Entertainment Mark Millar wants to build one universe for both Marvel and Fox

Mark Millar wants to build one universe for both Marvel and Fox

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Love ’em or hate ’em, you can’t deny that Marvel Studios has changed the game. Ten years ago, the existence of a cohesive, shared movie universe populated by different characters was nothing more than a fanboy pipe dream. But not only did Marvel prove that it was possible, they made it ridiculously successful, culminating in Joss Whedon’s record breaking team-up flick, The Avengers.

Now it looks like recent 20th Century Fox appointee Mark Millar will not only be taking a page out of Marvel’s book, by doing some world building of his own, but that he also wants them all to play nice.

As you may recall, Millar was appointed by Fox a few weeks ago to act as a creative consultant on all their Marvel properties (Fantastic Four, X-Men), sort of like a bargain bin Joss Whedon, if you will. And as many suspected he’d do, Millar appears to be corralling the Fox properties into a single shared universe just like Marvel did. But what was surprising was Millar’s statements to SFX, that he would like the two separate shared universes to work together:

“Fox have said that they want to build a cohesive universe and I’d personally like this to work in complement to the Marvel one. It would be cool if these universes didn’t contradict each other so if you went to see Spidey, the Avengers, the X-Men, etc, as a viewer you would have no idea that all three are coming from different studios. I’d love to make it look like they’re all just happening in one place.”

“I don’t think it’s something anyone would want to rush into,” he continues. “Following that Marvel model, we want to establish things first. If you had a Fantastic Four relaunch, and Wolverine and the X-Men were in it, I think it would distract you from the Fantastic Four.”

“You can make people aware that they’re existing in the same universe without making it a big crossover movie, but it would be an injustice to the Fantastic Four not to make their first movie all about them.”

While Millar would have to wrangle both Marvel and Sony (they own Spider-Man and Ghost-Rider) on board, I now firmly believe that it’s only a matter of time before this becomes a reality. Everybody wants a piece of the Avengers box-office pie now, so if they can’t beat them, they might just join them.

Millar’s statements also come just one week after X-Men producer Laura Shuler Donner said that she would like to see the X-Men and Avengers cross-over, so it’s also not as if he’s alone in this desire. While having an Avengers\X-Men\Spider-Man\Fantastic Four would be fanboy nirvana, it would be a logistical (not to mention paycheque) nightmare, so I’m not holding out for that, but a couple of nods here and there in the films to give the impression that they’re all hanging out in the same neck of the woods would certainly go a long way.

Last Updated: October 16, 2012

2 Comments

  1. this, would be brilliant! even if it’s a small nod, like the baxter building in the next avengers, etc, would be nice, and it’d appease every fanboy out there!

    Reply

    • James Francis

      October 16, 2012 at 16:48

      Except this has nothing to do with fans – because there are frankly not enough. They are building an uber-franchise and appealing to a larger market. I predict that a decade from now Marvel comics will be an afterthought and you will be more likely to buy Avenger underpants than anything resembling a decent graphic novel experience.

      Reply

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