I'm looking forward to Marvel Studios re-acquiring the rights to The Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, the X-Men and everyone else by about 2020. With Fox and Sony's aggressive release strategy, I don't think they have a chance of getting them anytime soon by rights expiration, but I do believe Marvel is planning to purchase the rights outright.
They will have the money. At worldwide box-office, the ten films they have released so far have grossed five billion dollars over budget. To give this some perspective, Star Wars was sold for four billion. This also does not include their income from toys, DVD/Blu-ray releases, etc.
The biggest danger when this happens is that the film universe could finally become too crowded. For comic fans, this won't be a big deal, but for the average movie-goer, the amount of characters will absolutely become too confusing. A solution to this could be to specify a certain frame of time during which each character can act within the universe. In this way, they could all exist within the same universe without excessive crossovers.
- 1960 to 1970: The Fantastic Four, Daredevil
- 1965 to 1975: Spider-Man, The Defenders
- 1970 to 1980: The X-Men, The Punisher
- 1975 to 1985: Doctor Strange, Guardians of the Galaxy
- 1980 to 1990: The Avengers, Man-Thing
These are just for example, so don't get too upset about your favorite characters being unable to crossover or the fact that this doesn't line up to the existing films. Otherwise, let me know what you think!
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