Can you blame them?

The Fantastic Four franchise seems doomed to an eternity of wasted potential, churning out reboot after reboot in order to keep the iconic comic book characters in the hands of 20th Century Fox. While there have been whispers of a possible sequel for some time (even producer Simon Kinberg wanted it to be more fun and less serious than the previous outing), Marvel is not interested in picking up the rights anytime soon.

While speaking to AlloCine, “Monsieur Marvel” himself Kevin Feige was very clear that his company had no plans for integrating the superhero quartet in the near future: “[We have] no plans with the Fantastic Four right now. No discussions about it.”

And how could they? The MCU has all been planned into the next decade, the prospective cast of Infinity War is bloated enough as it is, and introducing four new heroes (and probably rehashing their origin stories yet again) no doubt sounds daunting even for Disney. Spider-Man is a bit of an outlier, in that his appearances in Civil War and Infinity War came about through a whole bunch of negotiating between Marvel and Sony.

Then again, if Spidey can hang with the Avengers, maybe the Fantastic Four and even the X-Men can as well. Characters from different teams crossover in the comics all the time, so it’d make perfect sense to do so in the films too, eventually. That is, unless the superhero blockbuster bubble bursts before Marvel has a chance to plan out Phase 5.

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