EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT MARVEL UNIVERSES AND CHARACTERS

If you’re a real comic head, you must have come across that discussion where someone or a group of people mistake one Universe or franchise for another be it Superheroes or characters in separate franchise or even under the same franchise but in a different universe. This article might just be what you need to a better understanding of both the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) , Marvel shared properties.

First of all, what I’m about to say next is very important so listen carefully, NOT EVERY MOVIE THAT HAS THE MARVEL LOGO AT THE BEGINNING IS A MARVEL MOVIE OR IS MADE BY MARVEL.

Marvel Studios are yet to produce any series, so for that reason all their series do not tie in to the main MCU storyline and therefore exist in a separate universe. The MCU currently consists of 23 titles spanning from 2008’s Iron-Man to Last Year’s Spider-Man: Far From Home. Believe it or not, before Marvel Studios started making multibillion dollar movies they were struggling to make ends meet financially and they had to sell off the movie rights to some of their more prominent properties like Spider-Man, X-Men (and all associated mutants e.g. Deadpool) as well as Fantastic Four. While some of the earlier movies like the Spider-Man trilogy were co-produced the recent movies like Venom, Dark Phoenix, The New Mutants are not Marvel produced.

WHO OWNS WHO?

After Disney acquired Marvel they decided to start buying back not only the Marvel properties but also the studios that owned them. Disney now own FOX studios (21st Century Fox) and have restored the rights of characters like Fantastic Four, X-Men and related characters like Galactus, Silver Surfer, Deadpool etc. They’ve also bought over Universal restoring Hulk and related characters. The last comic movie Fox made before the merger was The New Mutants which Marvel finally decided to release a few weeks ago but in the coming years you can expect to see our beloved characters like the X-Men and Fantastic Four rebooted in the MCU. Imagine a live action adaptation of the Avengers vs X-Men comics, I know some of you reading this are re-inacting that “Don’t do it, Don’t give me hope” meme but it is a possibility and I’ve recently theorized that it could be as early as the WandaVision series.

The only major character that Marvel hasn’t been able to recover is Spider-Man and all other related characters like Venom and Miles Morales, cast your mind back to last year just after the release of Far From Home when it was reported that our friendly neighbourhood Superhero would be leaving the MCU because of dispute between parent company Sony and producing company Marvel, this was because Sony still owned the character. So for every MCU movie that Spider-Man and his related characters appear in there is a stipulated contract, The previous agreement was for 3 Spiderman movies and 3 crossover movies like Avengers: Endgame but they later agreed to renew the contract for 1 more Spiderman movie and 2 more crossover movies. There were also reports that Sony had told Disney that they could get back the property for about a couple of billion dollars and I’m sure Disney might be weighing their options. But then again, Marvel still have ownership of the Spiderman comics and merchandise like action figures raking in billions yearly so they might decide to continue this contract method for now.

Speaking of contracts, if you’ve notice Fox and Sony release X-Men and Spiderman related movies at least every other year to avoid the contracts from expiring. This has made both studios have a quite inconsistent release roster of Marvel related releases while Sony has arguably been more successful with some good movies like Into The Spiderverse and Venom subpar movies like Amazing Spiderman movies can’t be overlooked. As for Fox movies like the mediocre 2015 Fantastic Four reboot as well as subpar X-Men movies like Dark Pheonix and The New Mutants have been a stain in the legacy of such great franchises but on the other hand X-Men related Deadpool 1&2 and Logan have been very good movies. Before now Hulk and related characters could only appear in other titles like Avengers and Thor, that’s why even for a major character like The Incredible Hulk he has had only one standalone movie since 2008 which was co-produced by Universal because without their approval Marvel couldn’t make a Hulk movie on their own but now that Marvel now own the rights they plan to release a She-Hulk series in the near future and there are theories that Super villains like Red Hulk and The Thunderbolts might be forming judging by the Black Widow and Falcon and The Winter Soldier trailers. Even Paramount Studios has movie and distribution rights to some of the earlier MCU movies but Disney negotiated a deal that would give Marvel sole rights to those movies.

As for the Television and series, like I said before Marvel are yet to actually make a series but will start soon enough. All their Netflix series like Jessica Jones, Punisher and Daredevil etc. either expired or were cancelled because of Disney+ so as to avoid confusion, seeing as Disney’s streaming service are going to be having their own MCU-related series coming soon. The closest series to the Cinematic Universe are Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Agent Carter and Marvel boss Kevin Feige has revealed and much to the dismay of AOS lovers that the series is not canon (meaning it has no tie in with the main MCU storyline) despite the fact that a few characters have appeared on both said series and some MCU movies . As for the future of the Marvel Universe it all looks exciting with a lot of their characters restored by Disney and a new lineup that seems to be forming not all movies can or will be purely cinema seeing as streaming seems to be the future of movies even before the pandemic. Also, Disney’s streaming service has been very successful since less than a year of launch and adding the MCU to this would definitely add a lot of new subscribers.

This series aren’t just going to be regular series but blockbuster series, because what happens in the series are now going to have implications on what happens in the movies. So going forward you have to see both the series and movies, a brilliant strategy especially as there are a lot of characters now. WandaVision seems to be teeing up Mulitiverse wrecking implications and it has already been said that the series is going to be a prelude to the next Spiderman and Doctor Strange movies. With series like Falcon and The Winter Soldier, Loki also almost ready for release it seems the future of the MCU is now going to be fully action packed. Instead of waiting months for new Marvel content we could be getting content every month and I believe I speak for a lot of people when I say this new releases can’t come soon enough.

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