When you look back at Marvel’s history of handling the movie rights of its most famous characters, you can’t help but feel that they just made things difficult for themselves in the long run. Unlike DC, who gave all of their characters over to Warner Bros, Marvel chose to give away their characters to plethora of different studios, with examples such as Sony getting Spider-Man and Ghost Rider and 20th Century Fox getting the X-Men and Fantastic Four.
In one sense this arguably helped Marvel out when starting Marvel Studios, after all if they weren’t forced to make films about their (at the time) B-list heroes such as Iron Man, then the company would more than likely still be relying on Spider-Man as their mascot.
However, the fact that Marvel’s rights are all over the place has resulted in some weird situations and deals being made between studios. Some are fairly straightforward such as future Spider-Man movies being distributed by Sony, but co-produced by both Marvel and Sony. Others are just confusing, such as the handling of Quicksilver; where Marvel were allowed to use Quicksilver for one film, but could not mention him as a mutant or Magneto’s son, and Fox could use him for multiple films, but can’t mention him as an Avengers or refer to him as Quicksilver-
In short it’s a very weird arrangement the two studios made that’s difficult to wrap your head around.
But recently, Kevin Feige revealed that Marvel and Fox made another deal recently with regards to a certain ‘moody teen’ from 20th Century Fox’s biggest film for far this year.
It was revealed that as a result of Negasonic Teenage Warhead being so different from her comic book counterpart, permission was needed from Marvel in order to use this new iteration of the character. Marvel agreed, but on the basis that Marvel could use a character owned by Fox in the upcoming ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2’. And that character is Ego the Living Planet.
Yes, Peter Quill’s dad, played by Kurt Russell, is the character that Fox had to let Marvel use in order for Negasonic Teenage Warhead to be in ‘Deadpool’.
Given that these studio deals are being made more and more frequently, while I doubt we’ll ever reach a stage of all barriers between studios being broken down, it’s nice to know that the rules are getting more flexible.
Think of all the other cool things that could happen if Marvel and Fox kept playing nice like this.
What do you guys think of this character swap between Marvel and Fox? Totally worth it? Or totally pointless?