The moment it was announced that Disney was buying 20th Century Fox from News Corporation, the Marvel zombies immediately began foaming at the mouth (no wonder they’re called zombies) about the possibility of the Marvel film franchises owned by Fox, namely the X-Men and Fantastic Four, finally rejoining the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But progress on the acquisition has gone slowly, to the point that Marvel’s Kevin Feige now says even when the deal is done, it will be many years before these or any characters begin returning to the MCU. Essentially, in the best case scenario, Marvel’s Phase 4 will be over and done with before the X-Men and FF get their shot.

Here’s what Feige told The Playlist:

Any of that deal would take a while to get going and years from whenever and if ever it happens. So, certainly it won’t impact the five movies we’ve announced, and it probably wouldn’t impact anything for a handful of years after that. Because really, we’re not thinking about that. We’re thinking of delivering on what we promised. Any movie, especially for any characters we don’t have the rights to yet until someone tells us we do, would be even further after that.

I know Marvel fans (myself included) were holding out hope for some grand and glorious team up to cap off Avengers 4. (It would make a certain amount of sense if the Avengers headed to other cinematic universes to recruit more heroes to fight Thanos and wound up finding, say, Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool or whatever.) On the plus side, this saves Marvel the headache of trying to explain why the Human Torch looks so much like Killmonger for at least five years or so.

Gallery - 10 Marvel Cinematic Universe Plot Threads That Don’t Make Sense:

More From ScreenCrush