Marvel Breakdown: Who Owns the Film Rights to What?

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Marvel Breakdown: Who owns the film rights to what?

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WHO OWNS WHO?

Marvel owns the Avengers... Sony owns Spider-Man... and Fox owns The Fantastic Four and the X-Men? What about all the other crazy characters in the Marvel Universe? 

I have asked myself this question on numerous occasions and often here it being the topic of many blogs, podcasts and see if brought up almost every night on forums. We all know who owns the rights to the big names, and we were all confused as hell when we heard that Quicksilver is going to be appearing in both, X-Men: Day's of Future Past, and Avengers: Age of Ultron but we now know that there was a split of ownership for him from Disney/Marvel and Fox. So this post is to help clear things up and to find out who we could actually see team up with the Avengers sometime in the future, and who we can cry ourselves to sleep about because there is no hope for a team-up. Once all of that is said and done, we're going to go in and see who has the chance of making it to the big screen, or even the small screen(TV) for that matter! So, enough of my rambling, let's get in depth about what key characters numerous studios own from Marvel Comics!

I knew that Lionsgate previously owned the rights to The Punisher before they reverted back to Marvel Studios, but to my surprise they own the rights to another Marvel character. 

Man-Thing! That is correct! They terrifying Swamp Monster is owned by Lionsgate entertainment! In 2005 they(lionsgate) released a Man-Thing film that, well... Did less than average to say the least and currently holds a 20% on Rotten Tomatoes. The fact that lionsgate owns Man-Thing doesn't bother me too much. I love the character and think that there is potential for an awesome Man-Thing film, somewhere down the line, but the fact that Marvel doesn't own the film rights is an okay thing. I don't think we would ever see Man-Thing appear along side The Avengers, though, he could make for an awesome story on Marvel's TV show "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." This is definitely one of the characters most people don't know about and Lionsgate seems like a good studio for Man-Thing to belong to.

20th Century Fox until recently, owned Daredevil and all of his related characters, but the rights to which have finally come back home to Marvel studios! With Daredevil, Elektra, and the Kingpin back in Marvel, I'd say there is a high chance that we could see these three characters pop up into the Marvel Cinematic Universe sooner than later. Granted, Marvel has a Netflix TV Show currently in development for Daredevil, but my guess is that these three characters could cross over onto the big screen. With that being said, lets see who Fox still owns!

The X-Men. Yes, I know we all know that Fox owns the X-Men but I had to add some sort of suspense didn't I? To be completely honest, I'm not too upset about Marvel not owning this HUGE lot of characters. Of course I would love to see Wolverine fighting along side Captain America, or Deadpool cracking jokes and irritating Iron Man, but ultimately, I think it would get way to crowded with this large lot in the MCU. Along with owning the rights to the X-Men, Fox also owns the rights to the word "Mutant" in Marvel films. Pretty crazy huh? Only 20th Century Fox Marvel films are allowed to say the word, Mutant. With them owning the word it has led MCU fans to speculate that to replace the lack of "mutants" in the cinematic universe, we're going to see the introduction of the Inhumans starting with Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch in the upcoming film Avengers: Age of Ultron. Which leads us into my next point, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch are owned by both Marvel, and 20th Century Fox for a very simple reason. Both characters are apart of The Avengers, and The X-Men. But wait!? If a character is a member of the X-Men, and The Avengers and are owned by both, does that mean Wolverine, Havok and Rouge are partially owned by Marvel as well? DO NOT TAKE WHAT I AM ABOUT TO SAY AS FACT! JUST SPECULATION: I'm going to say no. Wolverine joined the Avengers in 2005, which was well long after the creation of Marvel Studios(1993), and Havok, and Rogue didn't join until recently. It is sad, but for now, it appears as though Wolverine is going to have to stay cutting up sentinels on Fox's time.

The fact that Fox still owns the Fantastic Four is so utterly depressing to me. Fox has already tried with the Fantastic Four and failed terribly. They are now trying again with a re-boot of the series and based off of the recent plot that got released, is going to be as terrible as their previous attempt. Not only will we never see Reed Richards get into a "whose smarter" fight with Bruce Banner, but we will never see The Negative Zone in a Marvel Cinematic Universe film. We recently found out that the ruler of the negative zone, Annihilus, is going to be the villain in the upcoming Fantastic Four film which leads me, and I would say everyone else to believe that The Negative Zone is also owned by Fox. On top of all that, The Fantastic Four played a pretty big role in the fan favorite "Civil War" story line which has been rumored to be Marvel's Phase 4 plan. And we cannot forget that Reed Richards is a key member in Marvel's "The Illuminati" who also play a big role in the Civil War story line. 

Believe it or not, Universal Picture's does indeed own the rights to a Marvel Character. Previously universal had owned the rights to Iron Man which they bought in 1990, but then sold to 20th Century Fox in 1996, before reverting back to Marvel Studios. Universal also put out the Howard the Duck film, and the "Hulk" film from 2003. But! There is one character that Universal still surprisingly owns the rights to!

That is correct. Namor The Submariner is owned by Universal Pictures. The main reason that I'm bummed about Marvel not having the Submariners rights is because we wont be seeing a Defenders movie anytime soon. I'm sure that the rights for Namor are coming up for expiration soon because although he had a movie in the very early stages of Pre-Production in about 2004-2005, there has not been any talk of a film currently slated or in production. I'm hoping that in about 2-3 years will be getting news of Namor returning back to Marvel. Another reason this totally sucks is that we wont be able to see the hatred between Namor and Black Panther. I was just thinking the other day how awesome it would be to get a versus film of the Atlantians and Wakandians! Namor is also another member of Marvel's Illuminati. Like I said though, in due time hopefully it will happen!

We all know who I'm about to talk about, but it still need's to be talked about! 

Like I said, we all know who I'm talking about whenever Sony-Marvel is brought up. Spider-Man. He's been my favorite super hero forever and Sony has made it 100% known that they have absolutely no intention about letting the rights to Spidey go back to Marvel. Their reasoning? Money of course! I would place a bet saying that Marvel will get the rights back to the X-Men before we see them get the rights back to Spidey. But with that being said, it's not completely impossible for him to pop up in the Avengers are some point in time. Marvel/Disney and Sony, both announced back in December that they worked "very closely" on the upcoming "The Amazing Spider-Man 2." What does this mean? Ultimately not much, and producer Avi Arad has previously been quoted in saying that Sony doesn't see the need for Spider-Man to be in The Avengers because there is no gain for Sony or Marvel/Disney. As much as I would love to see Spider-Man in an Avengers film, I'm actually okay with him not being apart of the MCU. Spider-Man has never been a big player with the Avengers until the Civil War story line, and has always been sort of in a universe of his own in the comics. Though I don't think he'll appear in The Avengers 2, I think that there is a slight, and I mean SLIGHT chance that he may pop up in the third installment of the Avengers series, but until then, at least we have the animated team up's right?

The "Gray Area!" What does that mean? That means that there are a few properties that are either co-owned by both Marvel and another studio, or no one really knows where they would fall. There are four (kind of 5, you'll see) properties I'm going to talk about below, so let's get started!

 We all know that Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver will appear in the upcoming films X-Men: Day's of Future Past, and Avengers: Age of Ultron but how exactly? Well, if you were reading this article at all I already told you! Both of these characters appear on the X-Men and The Avengers teams and they were already apart of both teams before the creation of Marvel Studios in 1993 making it possible for them to be co-owned by Marvel and Fox. The only issue is that The Avengers versions of these characters cannot have any relation to their father, Magneto, and they cannot be called "mutants." Honestly though, that is the least of my worries. There is already speculation that they're going to be the introduction to the Inhumans, which is brilliant in my eyes. And they're back story will probably be that they were taken away from their family at a young age by Baron Von Strucker and have no idea who their parents are. I have full faith in Joss Whedon in being able to work around these issues. 

The Kree and the Skrulls are huge players in the Avengers comics, and the Fantastic Four comics, but with Ronan The Accuser being the main antagonist in the upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy film it confirms for us that Marvel does indeed own the rights to the Kree. But I think that this falls into the co-ownership area similar to Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch and I think that both fox and Marvel share ownership of the Kree, and the Skrulls. So it could definitely be possible for us to see the Marvel event, Secret Invasion in an upcoming Avengers film, though I wouldn't expect it until Phase 5 or 6.

 The final character I'm going to be talking about is Jessica Drew aka Spider-Woman. A lot of people are confused about who exactly, owns the rights to Spider-Woman. Is it Sony because her name is just about exactly the same as Spider-Man's? Or is it with Marvel Studios because she is incredibly involved with Hydra and The Avengers? DO NOT TAKE WHAT I AM ABOUT TO SAY AS FACT: I believe that Marvel owns the rights to Jessica Drew for one reason and one reason only. Spider-Woman is not a supporting character, or even a character related to Spider-Man. She was created simply so that another comic book company wouldn't come in and swoop up the name. The only time Spider-Woman and Spider-Man really ever interact is when they're both on The Avengers, but for the most part, I would say Spider-Woman should be tied in with Captain America's package due to her ties with Hydra. There is also a lot of speculation going around about who the character Skye from Agent's of S.H.I.E.L.D is and since about the middle of the series

I have speculated that Skye is really going to turn out to be Jessica Drew aka Spider-Woman. Will she be called Spider-Woman? No, probably not, but I believe that once her back story is revealed it will also be revealed that her real name is Jessica Drew. She could also be used to introduce the inhumans before Avengers 2!

So what do you think of all the character splits? Is your favorite Marvel Character owned by someone other than Marvel studios? What property would you like to see revert back to Marvel first? Sound off in the comments below or feel free to tweet me at @4theFan!

Written by Matt Skajem