by: S. Scott Stanikmas

Marvel Studios has a plethora of characters that they’ve already put on screen and an untapped treasure trove of them that have yet to see the inside of a movie theater. But that doesn’t stop fans from clamoring for the studio to get the rights for the X-Men and/or Fantastic Four back to give us a WHOLE Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Marvel Studios isn’t worried, as they have a big plan in place already that takes them up through the end of Phase Three and the year 2020.

But what if they got those rights back and they could use mutants again? Or travel to the Negative Zone? Would we have to wait until the start of Phase Four and have all of these films redone to establish a new continuity?

At the Hero Complex Gallery in Los Angeles, Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige talked about how they would introduce a new character that they never thought they’d get their hands on – like Spider-Man:

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.

This is interesting. It means that they have faith that one day they might get the X-Men or Fantastic Four back.

I don’t have any faith that they’ll get the X-Men back though. Fox will hold onto that until the day the franchise stops making money…and even then they might just hold onto them just to spite Marvel and Disney.

The Fantastic Four I could see FOX just tossing back to Marvel though. At this point, with the awful taste the Josh Trank version left in everyone’s mouth, would Marvel really want them? It would take quite a bit of work to repair the damage done, but for the sheer joy of seeing Galactus possibly being the big bad of Phase Four (in my perfect world) it would be worth it.