Could ‘Fantastic Four’ Be Left Out Of Disney And 20th Century Fox’s Impending Deal?
By Hoai-Tran Bui/Dec. 11, 2017 12:00 pm EST
Who Actually Owns the Fantastic Four?
The history of Fantastic Four’s movie rights is a long and storied one, involving a German production company, a never-released Roger Corman B-movie, and a confusing division of rights for Fox.
It’s become well-known comic book movie lore that Marvel battled potential bankruptcy for years, forcing the company to option the movie rights to some of its most popular characters. Spider-Man went to Sony, the X-Men and Daredevil went to 20th Century Fox, Universal received The Hulk. But according to ScreenRant, Stan Lee had such an affection for the Fantastic Four — the team of Mr. Fantastic, Sue Storm, Johnny Storm, and the Thing were the first characters he created under the Marvel banner — that he set out himself to find a suitable buyer. He landed upon the German production company Constantin Film, whose founder Bernd Eichinger promised Lee that he would option the production rights to the Fantastic Four and the Silver Surfer in 1986, keeping the property as long as a movie adaptation was in production before the end of 1992. Thus began the infamous 7-year statute, which urban myth dictates that a studio could maintain the movie rights to a Marvel property as long as a film was made before the allotted seven years passed. It’s unclear whether each studio that optioned a Marvel property was subject to this deal, though it is how properties like Daredevil and The Punisher were returned to Marvel Studios.
Unable to find a major studio to back a the pricey production that the story deserved, Constantin Films scrambled to enlist famous B-movie director Roger Corman to slap together a low-budget Fantastic Four film so that the studio could retain the movie rights. The movie was bad even for Corman’s tastes and the studio kept it in the vault, barely seen outside of a few illegal copies — though it has gained enough infamy to have a truly fantastic documentary made about its demise called Doomed: The Untold Story of Roger Corman’s The Fantastic Four.
If Disney acquires 20th Century Fox, X-Men, and its other franchises like Deadpool, Alien, Avatar, and Kingsman, as well as its TV divisions, would be controlled by the company. Fantastic Four remains a big question mark, simply because it appears that Constantin Film retains the property’s production rights.
But it should be noted that Constantin’s parent company hinted that it was considering consolidating its film and TV divisions to focus on sports broadcasting. This could put the Fantastic Four movie rights up for grabs yet again, which would offer Marvel the chance to simply buy them back. For now, we can only twiddle our thumbs while we wait for The Fantastic Four to finally get a big screen adaptation that lives up to its name. And for Disney to complete its takeover of one-third of the entertainment market.
