Today is a historical day for Hollywood as the acquisition of 21st Century Fox by Disney officially goes into effect. The acquisition is causing ripples for the movie industry at large. Some of it good, some really bad. One of the changes us MCU fans are about to experience is the integration of the Fox-owned Marvel properties. These films and characters have been mostly handled poorly, resulting in a lot of baggage both in audience perception and behind-the-scenes. In a report by THR, there may be a catch to this marvelous collision of properties as some producer contracts might be still attached.
The X-Men films date back to 2000’s X-Men, and there are producer deals that will need to be looked at and either untangled or bought out, say sources. Lauren Shuler Donner, who championed the 2000 film and has been a producer on all Fox’s mutant-centric movies, is said to have a deal that calls for her to receive an executive producer credit on any X-Men movie whether or not she is actively involved. Kinberg may have a similar deal.
It’ll be interesting to see how this caveat works out given how Kevin Feige chooses to work with his tightly-knit squad of genius producers referred in the Captain Marvel credits as the Marvel Studios Parliament. Simon Kinberg is notoriously one of the culprits in why the X-films have taken a turn for the worse so it’ll be annoying to see his name attached to an MCU film.
In addition to this, THR is also reporting that Feige has been in meetings with some of these people in the past few months. There’s a lot of question whether Feige has plans to snap Fox’s iterations into oblivion or keep some of them (Deadpool will be 100% spared) and it remains unclear.
Marvel Studios has not publicly revealed any plans for integrating members of the X-Men and Fantastic Four into its cinematic universe, though Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige is said to have met with several members of the X-Men old guard in recent months.
Lastly, because the film slate beyond Avengers: Endgame is becoming denser with new properties and sequels to existing ones, THR believes that an X-Men and Fantastic Four film won’t be on the table until 2021. So unless Marvel Studios decides to prioritize this over films they’ve been developing in the past few years, it seems like we’ve got ways to go until we see the First Family return.
Source: THR
