Everyone knows Fox wants to emulate what Marvel did with The Avengers and the individual character films that tie-in into the larger universe. Everyone wants to emulate what Marvel did, because Marvel made $1.5 billion on The Avengers and $1.2 billion on Iron Man 3. Disney’s trying to do it with Star Wars, Sony is doing it with Spider-Man, Venom, and the Sinister Six (the Marvel properties Sony still has the license to), and any day now, Tyler Perry and Nicholas Sparks are going to join forces for the Justice League of religious interracial schmaltz. Now comes a rumor from financial site The Motley Fool that Fox will Avengersize X-Men and The Fantastic Four (the Marvel properties Fox has the license to), based on the 1987 four-issue comic series Avengers vs. The Fantastic Four. Um, sounds cool.
Based on a 1987 four issue comic called Fantastic Four vs. X-Men, the movie will see the characters against each other because of secrets regarding the Fantastic Four’s origin. The new movie also comes as Fox is rebooting the Fantastic Four series with new actors and actresses. The last movie in the series, “Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer”, came up short at the box office with a gross of $132 million domestically and $157 million in foreign markets. The new reboot is scheduled for release on June 19, 2015. [The Motley Fool ]
Based on everything I said in the first paragraph, yeah, it sounds pretty plausible. Everyone’s copying Marvel, and of course Fox would get in on the act using the Marvel properties they own. The X-Men series is already looking pretty Avengers-y, what with all the time travel and the separate Wolverine movies and everything. The challenge here will be redoing Fantastic Four in a way that makes it, you know, not terrible.
There’s a pretty good summary of the comic book in question over on Wikipedia. I’d try to boil it down for you, but I don’t want to get beard weevils. I wish Bud Light still did those “Real American Heroes/Real Men of Genius” commercials, because “Mr. Comic Book Wikipedia Writer” would be an awesome one.
