Late last year, it was announced that The Walt Disney Company was seeking to acquire 20th Century Fox’s film and TV assets, in a deal that will have huge ramifications for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, allowing Marvel Studios to bring characters from the X-Men and Fantastic Four worlds into the fold.
Despite a late effort from Comcast to hijack the deal, Disney and Fox ultimately reached an agreement this past July, with the two companies looking to complete the acquisition in the first half of 2016. And, speaking to Playback, Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige has offered an update, revealing that Marvel is yet to start planning how they might incorporate the characters into the MCU.
“We’ve been told it’s looking very, very good and could happen in the first six months of next year,” said Feige. “The notion of the characters coming back is great. It’s nice when a company that created all these characters can have access to all those characters. It’s unusual not to. But in terms of actually thinking about it and actually planning things, we haven’t started that yet.”
Feige has previously suggested that he has some “vague ideas” for the X-Men and Fantastic Four but it could be a number of years before the characters are introduced into the MCU. However, as we saw with Captain America: Civil War and Spider-Man, Marvel can act quickly when opportunities arise and so we certainly wouldn’t be surprised if things start moving fast once the ink dries on the deal.