Search icon

Movies & TV

20th Sep 2018

Disney confirm Marvel will take over the X-Men movies following a merger with Fox

Wil Jones

Superhero quiz

“I think it only makes sense.”

As Disney’s takeover of 21st Century Fox rumbles ever-closer to completion, one thing is becoming clearer.

The X-Men are probably going to show up in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Despite being published by Marvel Comics, the movie rights to the merry mutants were sold to Fox long ago, before Marvel started making their own films, and long, long before they were acquired by Disney.

Essentially, this has stopped Wolverine and co. from appearing in the MCU so far. A similar situation happened with Spider-Man, but then Disney and Sony came to an agreement which allowed Spidey to be in Captain America: Civil War.

Disney’s takeover of Fox would allow the X-Men to do a similar thing, but there has been speculation that Marvel might keep those movies separate for the time being.

There has been a development though after Disney CEO Bob Iger confirmed that, should the deal all go through with no issues, it’s very likely the X-Men will join the MCU.

“I think it only makes sense,” Iger said. “I want to be careful here because of what’s been communicated to the Fox folks, but I think they know. It only makes sense for Marvel to be supervised by one entity. There shouldn’t be two Marvels.”

He was also asked if Deadpool could end up on The Avengers – but he let less slip about that one.

“Kevin [Feige, Marvel Studios President]’s got a lot of ideas. I’m not suggesting that’s one of them. But who knows?”

The deal is far from done at the moment – big corporate takeovers can be hamstrung for all sorts of reasons – but it looks like Cyclops and Iron Man will be teaming up at some point.

LISTEN: You Must Be Jokin’ with Aideen McQueen – Faith healers, Coolock craic and Gigging as Gaeilge