Kevin Feige says characters like the X-Men, Deadpool, or even the Fantastic Four can easily fit into the MCU.
[toggler title=”TL;DR” ]Marvel Studios has contingency plans ready if they regain the rights to characters they cannot use, like X-Men or Deadpool. [/toggler]
With 12 films and multiple characters, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has become one of, if not the, most complex film series to date. But as many of us know, it could be a lot more complex.
Numerous characters, like the X-Men and Fantastic Four, are not a part of the MCU due to their rights being owned by separate movie studios, specifically 20th Century Fox.
While Marvel Studios has expressed their interest in having these characters appear in the MCU, contracts and studio quarrels have kept this from happening.
However, Marvel Studios is evidently optimistic, as a recent report suggests they already have ways to fit these characters into their universe.
In a Q&A hosted by Marvel Studios to promote the home video release of Avengers: Age of Ultron, head honcho Kevin Feige revealed that the studio has contingency plans ready in case they regain the rights to the characters they currently don’t own.
Feige first explained that Marvel Studios plans out the plotlines and larger story-arcs of their films in “broad strokes,” meaning that specific details are not planned far in advanced, but larger goals and events that will occur in the upcoming films have been set all the way up to The Avengers: Infinity War Part II.
He then explained how Marvel handles characters that they thought wouldn’t be able to appear in the MCU, like Spider-Man, who will show up soon thanks to a deal with Sony:
“The short answer is: the most important thing is the standalone movie, relaunching Spider-Man with a standalone movie with a new storyline that fits into this universe – that’s job number one for us. And as is the case, the connectivity is great but it doesn’t drive the train. That being said, if I understand what you’re asking, we had… this has been a dream of ours for a long time, and we always had contingency plans should you know — which we always do anyways. Are we going to be able to make another movie with this actor? If we are then we’ll do this, if not, we’re going to do this. If we get the rights to a certain character that’d be great, then we’d do this, if not, we’d do this. So we always sort of operate with those alternate timelines available and are ready to shift if something happens.”
The big takeaway from this is that although Marvel plans their films out very far in advance, they leave creative leeway in case anything changes. We’ve already seen them do this with Spider-Man for Civil War, so if, say, Fox doesn’t want the Fantastic Four anymore, Marvel Studios is ready to put them in the MCU.
Also, it sounds like Marvel is very dedicated to getting the standalone movies right for these “new” characters…
Could they redeem Fant4stic?
