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Who Owns What Marvel Character’s Movie Rights and How It Affects The MCU

7 years ago
A lot of people get into the arguing, analysing and reviewing a superhero character shown on screen and then end up blaming the wrong company if the movie/series was disappointing or praising if vice-versa.
Like how some fans blamed Marvel for the disappointment of Sam Raimi’s Spiderman 3 and also X-Men: Wolverine Origins and Evolution, when it should have been Sony  and Fox respectively that should have taken the hits instead.
Although Marvel are the real owners, developers and own the rights to all of the characters in the comics and cartoons, the live-action adaptations, are however, a different story all together… As Marvel only owns the rights to some of the characters as shown in the picture below.
This has led to some variations from the comics in the live-action movies. For instance, in the comics, Reed Richards of Fox’s Fantastic Four and Charles Xavier of Fox’s X-Men were part of the people that made the Planet Hulk and World Breaker Hulk storylines happen..the others being MCU’s Iron Man and Doctor Strange. But that is not the case in the movies as the events of Avengers: Age of Ultron was rewritten to be the precursor to Planet Hulk as we will see in Thor: Ragnarok.
Also, in the comics, Doctor Doom is also a prominent villain for The Avengers, and even wielded the infinity gauntlet also, but that wouldn’t happen in the movies because of rights, as Fox owns the Fantastic Four Franchise… Same problem with a movie showing The Avengers taking on Galactus and Silver Surfer.
Now you know why Andrew Garfield’s Spiderman couldn’t appear in any Marvel movie until they agreed equal rights and brought on Holland. Even with Deadpool being able to break the fourth wall and draw some scenes from the Marvel Cinematic Universe like the destroyed post-Captain America: Winter Soldier helicarrier, and the deleted scene that showed The Raft that Captain America broke his Civil War teammates out from, there is only so much the Merc with a Mouth can do so as not to cause problems when it comes to rights, licensing and copyrights between Fox and Marvel.
There are many other examples to give, but hopefully with the sad portrayal of characters in Fantastic Four and X-Men, maybe both studios can come together to strike a deal like Disney did with The Hulk and Sony did with Spiderman.
But If only they could get along, huh! It’ll be cool to see Hulk fight Wolverine, see Deadpool in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and see The Avengers take on Galactus and other Fox-owned villains. Right?

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