http://www.thedailybeast.com/articl...-sabotaging-the-fantastic-four-and-x-men.html
Since Marvel doesn’t own the film rights to the Fantastic Four or X-Men, they’ve thrown a series of strange jabs against the 20th Century Fox-owned properties.
It has, like Johnny Storm swelling with braggadocio, become readily apparent that something is rotten in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. No, I’m not talking about The Avengers slut-shaming Black Widow or Marvel’s alleged company-wide apathy towards women. It has to do with the bizarre series of events that have befallen the Fantastic Four—and, to a lesser degree, X-Men.
As you may well know, on August 7, 2015, Fantastic Four will crash-land into multiplexes nationwide. It’s a reboot of those godawful mid-aughts monstrosities whose most notable assets were a shirtless, highly manicured Chris Evans and an early plum role for the Scandal-ous Kerry Washington. Hell, the guy who played the original Mr. Fantastic, Ioan Gruffudd, is receiving sixth billing in this weekend’s earthquake epic San Andreas. And I still don’t know how to pronounce either his first or last name.
The film, directed by Chronicle’s Josh Trank, boasts a promising batch of young studs, including Miles Teller (Whiplash) as Reed Richards, Michael B. Jordan (Fruitvale Station) as Johnny Storm, Kate Mara (House of Cards) as Sue Storm, and Jamie Bell (the violent dom in Nymphomaniac) as Ben Grimm. And the fanboys are salivating. When the trailer dropped in late April, it was quickly anointed the most-watched trailer in distributor 20th Century Fox’s history, beating out the previous champ, last year’s X-Men: Days of Future Past.
But there’s been some odd drama brewing behind the scenes. Since 20th Century Fox owns the film rights to both the Fantastic Four and X-Men franchises (the latter acquired back in 1993), thus excluding them from the tethered MCU ecosystem and granting them limited financial windfall, the Disney-owned superhero behemoth Marvel has undertaken a series of covert actions against these two valuable properties.
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I know that Marvel (well, Disney) would like to have the rights to the FF and X-Men back in-house, but until that happens it seems to me it's in their best interest to have all their properties perform well at the box office, even those in movies made by other companies.
Since Marvel doesn’t own the film rights to the Fantastic Four or X-Men, they’ve thrown a series of strange jabs against the 20th Century Fox-owned properties.
It has, like Johnny Storm swelling with braggadocio, become readily apparent that something is rotten in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. No, I’m not talking about The Avengers slut-shaming Black Widow or Marvel’s alleged company-wide apathy towards women. It has to do with the bizarre series of events that have befallen the Fantastic Four—and, to a lesser degree, X-Men.
As you may well know, on August 7, 2015, Fantastic Four will crash-land into multiplexes nationwide. It’s a reboot of those godawful mid-aughts monstrosities whose most notable assets were a shirtless, highly manicured Chris Evans and an early plum role for the Scandal-ous Kerry Washington. Hell, the guy who played the original Mr. Fantastic, Ioan Gruffudd, is receiving sixth billing in this weekend’s earthquake epic San Andreas. And I still don’t know how to pronounce either his first or last name.
The film, directed by Chronicle’s Josh Trank, boasts a promising batch of young studs, including Miles Teller (Whiplash) as Reed Richards, Michael B. Jordan (Fruitvale Station) as Johnny Storm, Kate Mara (House of Cards) as Sue Storm, and Jamie Bell (the violent dom in Nymphomaniac) as Ben Grimm. And the fanboys are salivating. When the trailer dropped in late April, it was quickly anointed the most-watched trailer in distributor 20th Century Fox’s history, beating out the previous champ, last year’s X-Men: Days of Future Past.
But there’s been some odd drama brewing behind the scenes. Since 20th Century Fox owns the film rights to both the Fantastic Four and X-Men franchises (the latter acquired back in 1993), thus excluding them from the tethered MCU ecosystem and granting them limited financial windfall, the Disney-owned superhero behemoth Marvel has undertaken a series of covert actions against these two valuable properties.
_______________________________________________
I know that Marvel (well, Disney) would like to have the rights to the FF and X-Men back in-house, but until that happens it seems to me it's in their best interest to have all their properties perform well at the box office, even those in movies made by other companies.