Last I checked, Fox owns the movie rights to X-Men and the Fantastic Four; Sony owns the movie rights to Spider-Man—there are probably a few others I’m forgetting. These were from deals made before Marvel decided to start producing the movies itself, and thus makes it unlikely they’ll ever cross over with the Marvel Cinematic Universe they’ve set up leading into The Avengers.
My question though, is: is there anything legally stopping those other studios from teaming up with each other to do their own big crossover movie team, essentially a non-Marvel “Avengers” competitor? Assuming they don’t use anything from Marvel they hadn’t bought the rights to use (like the name “Avengers,” The Hulk himself, etc.), naturally.
I’m actually not sure if this better belongs in GQ, seeing as it deals more with issues of law, but I’ll try it here first.
Would anyone knowledgeable on the subject like to weigh in?
It would depend on the language of the license contract for each property. I could easily imagine that they have a clause saying “thou shalt not combine this property with any other Marvel property for which you may have a license or deal with another Marvel licensee.”
To some extent, it might depend on the wording of the deals by which the movie rights were transferred, and if the new teamup movie were an original script or leveraged a comic crossover like “The Mutant Agenda”, which featured Spiderman and the X-men.
Zebra: On edit - huh? The OP was asking about other studios teaming up characters that Marvel has already sold movie rights to, not the ones that they’ve made movies with recently.
At this point, the best bet for a comprehensive movie Marvel universe is to wait until the rights owned by Fox, Sony, etc. lapse and for Marvel Entertainment to refuse to extend them. Then make conditional on any future deal that the characters and plotlines be integrated (or at least integratable) with some kind of movie canon. At the very least, establish a few common elements, i.e. the leading New York newspaper is the Bugle, and drop a few references here and there to SHIELD or something.
I’m with friedo. The answer to the question is wholly dependent on the text of the license agreements. My guess is that such a thing would be forbidden, but it’s up to the parties.
It would seen to me that anything can be negociated, but you need a master negotiator to make it happen, the rights issue reminded me of the even bigger challenge the makers of Who framed Roger Rabitt had.
So I think it can be done, if you can find a negociator like Spilberg, hard to do I grant it.
Not quite sure what you’re asking, but if I’m reading you sort of right, there were the Universal Horror franchises (Dracula, Frankenstein, Wolfman) who after several of their own movies and sequels had a string of “team up” (for lack of a better word) movies.
As far as I know, the only properties Marvel/Disney doesn’t own/have back are X-Men and associated things (which covers almost all mutants,) Fantastic Four (which includes Dr.Doom, Galactus/Silver Surfer, Skrulls (though as we saw with The Avengers, just changing the name is an easy way around that,)) and Spider-Man (along with his main friends and enemies.)
Since Spider-Man is owned by Sony, and the other two by Fox, I don’t see them collaborating much. Which is too bad, because the FF and Spider-Man have ALWAYS been big on teaming-up in the comics…and even though The X-Men have teamed up with the FF a few times, it’s not that often, usually only in the big story lines that involve EVERY Marvel property.
At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if Fox lets their rights to The FF drop…neither of the movies were that great, and while they made money, it doesn’t seem like it was enough to entice them to try for a third. And since The Hulk actor was recast twice, there shouldn’t be a problem re-casting someone else to take Chris Evans’ place…in fact, they’d probably just fo a complete reboot and recast everyone, because other than Evans’ none of them were great (though Chiklis as The Thing was ok…but Alba as Sue and that guy I don’t know as Richard were terrible.)
Edit: Ahhh, I just read that Fox is planning on a reboot movie for The FF for 2014…they lose the rights if they don’t make a film by 2015.