PRODUCER LAUREN SHULER DONNER WANTS AN ‘X-MEN/AVENGERS’ MOVIE CROSSOVER
Lauren Shuler Donner helped usher in the modern superhero film era back in 2000 by producing Bryan Singer’s first X-Men film for 20th Century Fox. Unfortunately, back then no one at Marvel had the foresight to see that signing off the rights to various characters across multiple film studios would result in a scattered Marvel cinematic universe that was full of gaping holes. Pick up any issue of The Avengers in the comic shop, and you’ll see Wolverine and Spider-man on the team, trading one-liners in the middle of a battle against Galactus. But that same scenario is an impossibility in an Avengers movie, because Spider-man’s rights belong to Sony, Wolverine is a part of 20th century Fox’s X-Men contract, and Galactus also belongs to Fox (since he is a Fantastic Four villain.). However, in an interview with Crave, Shuler-Donner expressed that it would be a great idea to arrange something between studios so that these characters could all meet on the big screen:
I can’t even fathom the legal red tape, profit-splitting arrangements, and other bureaucratic nonsense that these studios would have to go through in order to have Hugh Jackman and Robert Downey Jr. verbally destroy each other and engage in what would essentially be a superhero dick-measuring contest on-screen in the same movie. But if they are willing to endure it for the sake of mind-boggling sums of money, then I wish that they’d snap to it already, because I would love to see a Marvel Universe movie where anything is possible.
Imagine seeing the Avengers flying back to Stark tower in a Quinjet, and Spider-man swings by and waves to them as he lands on the side of the Daily Bugle building. Imagine the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver warning the Avengers that their father Magneto, was up to something huge and terrible, and that they’d have to team up with the X-Men to stop him. Imagine the Fantastic Four gathering all of the heroes of New York together to stop the impending invasion of Namor The Sub-Mariner and his army of Atlanteans. Imagine Howard the Duck teaming up with Rocket Raccoon and Peter Porker, The Spectacular Spider-Ham! Ok, I should’ve quit while I was ahead…
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