Stan Lee was recently in the public eye helping to celebrate 75 years of Marvel Comics at a Q&A event, where an inquisitive fan dressed as Captain America asked whether there would ever come a day where ‘Spider-Man,’ ‘The Avengers’ and the ‘X-Men’ would share screen-time together, which Stan Lee answered with:

“It’s something that Marvel is very concerned about. It’s very difficult to bring ‘em all together because these characters are so successful and make so much money that the studios that have the rights don’t want to let them go. So that’s something that all the lawyers and all the production companies have to work out. Whether they get it worked out, I don’t know.”

It’s a question a lot of people have been asking lately, as a huge draw of Marvel comics is how all the heroes live in the same world and interact with one-another, something that the studio has done their best to imitate in the cinematic universe. But with the rights spread between 20th Century Fox, Sony, and Disney, there has been a lack of cooperation from the various rights holders not wanting to tie their money-making franchise into any else’s movies. What’s unfortunate is that in this case, the sheer amount of money that would come from a movie where the three franchises came together does not seem to be enough to motivate the studios to work together. Marvel Studios (owned by Disney) is the clearly the most successful with using their comic-book heroes, and seems the most willing to come to the table and negotiate, but the relative success of the ‘X-Men’ franchise seems to be what is stopping 20th Century Fox from dealing, clearly feeling they are doing just fine on their own, and wanting to maintain creative control. On the other side of the spectrum is Sony, whose last ‘Spider-man’ film was met with dismal critical reviews, and has historically had trouble maintaing the quality of the franchise. They seem more willing to deal with Marvel Studios, but the price they’ll set and how long negotiations will take has everything up in the air.

But now that the public has heard from Stan Lee himself wanting to see it all happen, maybe the studios will change their mindsets and try to make it happen. Until then, we’ll just have to enjoy our piecemeal Marvel movies as is, and hope the studios behind them can manage to do justice to the heroes they own.

Source: Huffington Post