We’re all focused on the rights of various Marvel characters being owned by multiple studios, pissing and moaning (you know who you are) about it, wanting Marvel to get the rights back, blah blah blah, and in so doing we’ve missed the forest because of the trees. Marvel doesn’t need to get the rights back to Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four or the X-Men…they just need to work out a deal with Sony and/or Fox to allow a villain or villains to cross-over for one shots!
And that villain should be Thanos.
Marvel owns his rights, and while he’ll be a presence in the upcoming Guardian of the Galaxy movie, he’s really not going to get heavily involved until “Avengers: The Thanos Wars” (or whatever they decide to call Avengers 3), which won’t come out until 2018 — five years from now. Now, as I recall, Marvel tried to get Fox to loan them back the rights to Galactus (or was it an outright “we want him back” deal?), but Fox refused. Okay, let’s get over it and ask this question: What if Marvel loaned out Thanos to Fox?
If Marvel and Fox could work out a deal, the studios could team up to give us one of the most mind bending super colossal cross-over events of all time! Just imagine how it could play out. Fox is coming out with X-Men: Days of Future Past in 2014, and then their Fantastic Four reboot in 2015, if I understand the schedule correctly, which sets the table perfectly. Why? Because Marvel will be ready to work on Avengers 3 and possibly GotG 2 (if it makes bucks next year), and that means — if they could work things out — they could gives us the following cross-over event to end all cross-over events…
2017: Guardians of the Galaxy: The Thanos Initiative (Thanos makes his move)
2017: X-Men: Apocalypse Rising (Thanos enlists the aid of Apocalypse)
2018: Fantastic Four: The Galactus Agenda (Thanos leads Galactus to earth)
2018: The Avengers: The Thanos Wars (And that’s a wrap!)
Dear Lord, I feel like a kid again just thinking about it!
Let’s face it, “Iron Man” was a good movie, but it wasn’t until Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) mentioned the phrase “Avengers Initiative” that we all sat up and in our seats, wide eyed and bushy tailed. And that’s exactly what this is about, why it can work.
Since Marvel owns the rights to Thanos, they get to start (GotG) and finish (Avengers) the saga, while Fox is allowed to set up the middle (X-Men and FF) acts. As I understand it, some actors negotiate for screen time in TV and movies, so Marvel could stipulate Fox’s use of Thanos for x-amount of minutes in their films, BUT control his visual appearance. In return, Fox and Marvel allow some of their characters to be used in “after credit” scenes.
- At the end of Guardians of the Galaxy, we see Apocalypse appear on earth, catching the attention of Professor X and Magneto.
- At the end of X-Men, we see Reed Richards surveying the damage done by Apocalypse, noticing a strong energy signal in space—cut to Galactus’ approach.
- At the end of Fantastic Four, we see Reed Richards contacting Tony Stark/Iron Man, saying: “We’ve done what we can, now here’s what you need to do.”
- And at the end of Avengers, we get a shot of key GotG, X-Men, Fantastic Four and Avengers celebrating their victory.
Be still my beating heart.
Look, I’m just a guy that loves comic books and movies, and seeing both genres come together over the past 10-plus years has made my day. It’s why this website is one of my most visited, if not THE most visited websites of my weekly life. But in the end, I’m just a fan spit-balling here. That being said, I truly do believe this could happen, if both studios can work it out. There’s money—a lot of money—to be made here, for both parties, so it’s in their best interests. But like I said, I’m just spit-balling and the reality is it’ll probably never happen.
It could, if the stars align just right and we sacrifice enough chickens, but realistically it more than likely won’t happen. But if it did…
Cut to the final end of the credits for Avengers—we see Marvel’s the Game Master sitting in a room with Krona, both staring at an orb flashing images of Avengers and JLA. “I pick the Avengers,” Game Master says. “Fair enough,” Krona replies. “Begin the game when you are ready.”
Dare to dream, right?
I’m Citizen…