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Rumor: Could Fantastic Four Returning To Marvel For 2020 Release? [Updated]

The recent Fantastic Four film was a disaster. Critics panned it (see our review here), the audience rejected it, and the filmmakers have distanced themselves away from it. But if the rumor from Den of Geek turns out to be true then there’s a huge silver lining in that cloud as they’re reporting Fox is exchanging two X-Men TV series for Fantastic Four.

But in an update to our story, according to io9  however, they are citing credible sources who say there’s no credence to this.

Let’s play a what-if: Fox has been trying to get an X-Men television series off the ground for some time now but the problem has been that while the studio owns the film rights to the X-Men property, Marvel still controls the television rights. All of a sudden, it looks like Fox isn’t just making one X-Men TV series but two of them: Hellfire and Legion.

According to Den of Geek, the way this deal went down is that Marvel exchanged the two X-Men TV series for Fantastic Four. The site claims the fact that Marvel unveiled three mystery films slated for 2020, and news breaking that Fox is getting two X-Men TV series is no coincidence: One of those 2020 films will be a new Fantastic Four.

I’m always hesitant about rumors like these because I don’t want to get my hopes up. But if Marvel can make a deal to bring Spider-Man into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, then I guess it’s not impossible to get Fantastic Four as well. 

Trading Fantastic Four for the X-Men TV shows wouldn’t surprise me as I suggested it as a way for Marvel to get the property back in August. I also suggested that Fox wouldn’t trade it for a single television show and now we’re getting two TV shows, so maybe there’s reason to hope. 

Despite Fox trying to create a Fantastic Four film three times and failing, Marvel needs the property because they kicked off the cosmic side of the universe with Guardians of the Galaxy. The rights with Fantastic Four come with important cosmic characters like Silver Surfer, Super Skrull, and the planet eating Galactus. Guardians already teased the Celestials so they’ve already planted the seeds for Galactus. 

I’ve suspected that MCU’s Phase Four and beyond will deal with the Kree-Skrull war in some way, with the introduction of the Kree as well as Captain Marvel and Inhumans films in the works. Bring the Fantastic Four back home and the MCU would get exponentially larger.

As it stands, it looks like Fantastic Four is staying where it is at Fox, and the Kree-Skrull war will have to go in different directions.

Art: Al Rio, Marvel