By now everyone realizes that the cinematic rights to certain characters and franchise within the Marvel Pantheon are not actually held by Marvel Studios. They are spread out among several other major studios, most notably Sony and Fox, with those studios holding lucrative deals that allow them to keep the franchises so long as they are using them.
This means that as Marvel Studios blows everyone’s collective minds with their spectacular feature films, several key characters are off-limits to them. Up to this point that was not really a big deal because Marvel had plenty of their own marquee heroes and villains to play with. However, now Marvel is looking to expand into the cosmic corner of their universe with ‘Phase 2′ and the two most popular and known cosmic characters are currently held by Fox.
Under normal circumstances this would simply mean Marvel would have to find replacements for Galactus and Silver Surfer as they move forward with their cosmic phase, but timing might just be on their side. Fox is under a tight deadline to get their Daredevil reboot off the ground, and they just recently lost their director. Instead of simply scrabbling, Variety is reporting that Fox has proposed a trade with Marvel Studios to extend the Daredevil rights, a deal that would bring Galactus and Silver Surfer back home to Marvel.
Not only is this great news for the characters and the fans who love them, but this also helps corroborate the theory that The Infinity Gauntlet is where ‘phase 2′ is headed. Both the Surfer and the devourer of worlds play a part in that story arch, and can help provide general audiences with another familiar face as Silver Surfer was already in a successful Fantastic Four movie a few years back.
This news also helps establish some more friendly terms between Fox and Marvel Studios which could pave the way for some deeper cooperation in the future. We already know that Marvel is willing to partner with these other studios for the benefit of their characters and films, hopefully friendly trades and mutual financial success can open the flood gates for and Avengers vs X-Men feature some time in the summer of 2020!*
Stay glued to The Flickcast for any more breaking news on this subject.
*Conceptually this is about as likely as Galactus joining the Avengers, but a fella can dream can’t he?
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