LogFAQs > #876686545

WhiskeyDisk posted...

If I'm not mistaken if Sony and Fox don't at least crank out a stinker with the Marvel properties they have rights to once every 5 years the rights revert back to Marvel Studio's ownership automatically.

Not sure if it's 5 years specifically, but there's definitely a "If you don't use X property within a period of Y time the rights revert back to Marvel" clause involved in all of those deals.

I THINK the Fox deal for the Fantastic Four is 7-8 years, because there was talk of Josh Trank edging up against the time limit when he was filming his shitty Fantastic Four reboot, and that was released about 8 years after Rise of the Silver Surfer. No clue if the same time scale is involved with the X-Men, but in that case, they're not cranking out constant X-related films to maintain the rights as much as they are to cash in on the lucrative profits anyway (see also the Legion TV show and the New Mutants movie they're currently kicking around in development, on top of Deadpool and whatever else they can spin out of the core franchise. There's a LOT to work with when you have the rights to EVERY X-Men related character, story, and title).

Sony's got a similar deal (ie, they have to keep making Spider-Man films or lose all the rights), but I'm not sure the exact time limit on that one either. It MIGHT be shorter, since Amazing Spider-Man was supposedly pushed out to maintain the rights, and that was only about 5 years after Spider-Man 3.

The only outstanding deal Marvel has that differs from those is the one that ties Hulk to Universal, which is supposedly a distribution deal that absolutely no one seems willing to talk about, but which seems to boil down to Marvel having to pay Universal a percentage of the gross on any Hulk solo movie they make, which Marvel seems unwilling to do (which is why they're basically doing the World War Hulk storyline as a Thor movie instead). I have no idea how many movies are tied to that deal (ie, Marvel would have to release X number of films through Universal before that deal lapses), but it definitely seems to be a "number of films" deal rather than a time-based one, because it doesn't seem to have an actual expiration date (and Marvel doesn't seem all that inclined to deal with Universal, whereas Universal doesn't seem all that inclined to sell the rights back, so Hulk might be in limbo pretty much forever).

Namor was the only other character tied up by Universal if I remember, but it's been implied those rights have finally been pulled back to Marvel. On the other hand, DC getting the Aquaman movie out first (and the almost inevitable failure of the Aquaman movie) will probably keep Marvel from wanting to do anything with Namor.

(If they're smart, they COULD play up the period of time in the 90s when Namor associated with the Heroes for Hire and work him into the Defenders line-up of Netflix shows - doubly fitting since he was actually one of the founding Defenders in the comics - which would bypass a lot of problems, but I don't know if they really care all that much about him as a character at the moment. They've got WAAAY too many irons in the fire right now.)


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