[UPDATE] Many outlets are now denying the rumor. Anthony Breznican, of EW, states that 100%, the rights remain with Fox.
We’ve got a wonderful rumor by Den of Geek this morning, claiming that the rights to the Fantastic Four franchise have reverted back to Marvel, by way of leverage and negotiations. This is no surprise after the dismal performance of the Josh Trank directed 2015 superhero film, Fantastic Four, which took in less money over the course of its entire cinema run than the 2005 film of the same name made in its opening weekend.
With the news yesterday that Fox announced they’d negotiated the rights to bring two X-Men series to television (Legion and Hellfire), this makes sense. DoG’s source claims Marvel asked for the rights to the Fantastic Four back in exchange for the TV rights to X-Men, a franchise with a proven box office track record.
The source continues by stating that one of the three unnamed Marvel films set to arrive in 2020 (as part of Phase 4) will be a new Fantastic Four film, given the proper Marvel treatment. Keeping a 5 year distance, at least, from the 2015 disaster will certainly be a smart move. Unless of course, the superhero movie fever dies down by then. Only time will tell.
Geekritique
Well, I haven’t felt this happy since Spider-Man was given back to Marvel. I remember it well, that day. I’m glad Fantastic Four flopped because not only was it horrible (but I’m not going to go into another rant), but because it would lead to exactly this.
If it’s like the Spider-Man deal, 20th Century Fox will still get distribution rights but negotiate with Marvel Studios. And if it’s true, I can only wonder what property they exchanged Sony for Spider-Man (though I hear Sony wanted to reboot Spider-Man anyway). The question is – will the Fantastic Four be less Fantastic in a universe already populated with the Avengers?
It’s just a shame that the potential reboot with be criticised for being another reboot, despite art building on art and those people possibly not even understanding that it’s integrated with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. One can only hope Marvel’s Fantastic Four will keep the Marvel Cinematic Universe fresh. No doubt Spider-Man will cameo just to be meta.
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So sad that the rumor’s being denied. It would be really nice to have the rights revert to Marvel, if for no other reason than bringing in a character like Galactus after the Infinity War story arc.
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Shameless name drop: My brother, Doug Jones, played the Silver Surfer. I loved his performance but not the movie. Marvel knows both their product and their fan base, and they should make a much better movie if this rumor is true. Nice post.
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No way! I’ve met your brother at a con in the past. He also played in Hellboy. Small world. I should interview him some day.
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If you met Doug, then you know he is a sensitive, very kind man. He’s been like that since childhood. Thank you for your comment, and it’s nice to meet you.
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Cool. I didn’t hate those FF movies as much as a lot of people did… but the Surfer was one of the high points in either movie. I would have liked to see a Surfer solo movie OR perhaps now that Guardians of the Galaxy made it big, we could see the Surfer in a future sequel to that.
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Would love to see the Surfer again. Such a cool character.
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honestly it was stupid of Fox to try and do a Marvel film like that regardless considering how Marvel is tying all their stories together and have the right story lines that are drawing the people in… Having some random story out there like that just never sounded on the level anyway…
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Well. Imagine you are Fox and have the rights to a valued superhero franchise. They milked it so that the rights didn’t revert back to Marvel. Huge mistake, yes, and they lost hundreds of millions. It only makes sense to give it back to Marvel in exchange for something you know can make money.
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The thing is, from FOX perspective, I wonder if they did get back something that will make them money? I’m not sure about some of the other rumors regarding TV shows that might come out of this deal… I’ll be glad to see Marvel have the characters back to merge with their universe, though.
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