In case you don't know the unpleasant history between Marvel Studios and 20th Century Fox, here is a quick recap. In the mid 90's Marvel was close to bankruptcy and they sold the live-action film rights to several of their characters to a number of studios. Some of those rights have reverted back to Marvel due to an inactivity clause, like Ghost Rider who's rights were once held by Sony Pictures and is now appearing on Marvel's Agents of Shield. Other characters are now shared after landmark deals were brokered, like the wall-crawling Spider-Man. This gave optimistic fans hope that Marvel and Fox could reach an agreement and the X-Men or the Fantastic Four could share the screen with Iron Man or Captain America, but nearly every time Marvel approached Fox to make an offer the Fox executives acted like jerks and Marvel was denied. To be fair there have probably been jerks on both sides of the table over the years. Regardless, it didn't seem likely that Marvel and Fox would ever coexist and with Fox churning out X-Men movies the inactivity clause is not a factor, at least not now.
This has always been my opinion. Go back and read the other entries on this subject if you don't believe me. Just as Batman has his rogues gallery that rarely interacts with the other DC heroes, the X-Men have a list of villainous mutants and mutant-hating humans that seldom cross paths with The Avengers. The mutants seem to exist in their own corner of the Marvel Comics Universe and are unnecessary in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The deal reached for the Fantastic Four film rights, on the other hand, included two of Marvel's best villains that oppose The Avengers quite often, Dr. Doom and Galactus, Devourer of Worlds. It has proven impossible to make a decent Fantastic Four movie and I actually don't want a Marvel helmed reboot, but I would immensely enjoy seeing Dr. Doom or Galactus face off against The Avengers after they've dealt with Thanos.
That day may be closer than Kevin Feige is letting on. It was recently revealed that in order for Fox to alter the power set of a mutant they wanted to include in Deadpool they had to surrender the rights to a classic Fantastic Four villain. Originally the lesser-known mutant known as Negasonic Teenage Warhead was a telepath. However, the writers or director Tim Miller wanted to give her explosive abilities (as the name implies) so they made a bargain. They really just wanted the character for the painful joke about how cool Deadpool thinks her name is. They could have used any number of mutants with similar powers, but no one else had such a name. In exchange, Marvel reacquired the film rights to Ego, The Living Planet. I can imagine the Fox executives snickering, believing they got the better end of the deal. No one knew Ego was to be Peter Quill's father in Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2, and where Fox turned Galactus into a giant space cloud they most likely thought Marvel was incapable of representing a sentient planet on the big screen. After the mind-blowing visuals of Dr. Strange helped the film rake in over $500 million and counting, they may be having second thoughts over giving up the rights to a compelling cosmic character for what amounted to be a bad joke.
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| Hopefully Ego, The Living Planet will appear as is and not rendered as a giant space cloud. |
Apparently, Ego can take a human form which is how he/it seduced Peter Quill's mother and will likely appear that way in Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2, played by Kurt Russel. I can just as easily imagine Ego also appearing as a planet-sized talking head, floating in space. With Marvel's seemingly fearless approach and with what director James Gunn accomplished in Guardians of the Galaxy, anything is possible.
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