Well it’s official! Simon Kinberg (‘X-Men: First Class‘) along with his Genre Films banner have just signed on for a three-year deal with 20th Century Fox to continue working on their Marvel franchises. The goal? It should be no surprise to anyone that they want to create a connected cross- franchise with the properties they own the rights to. Yes, they want to do the exact same thing that Marvel has done with their own overlapping universe.

Kinberg is no stranger to the mutant universe as he is already currently involved with both ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past‘ as well as the ‘Fantastic Four‘ reboot that the studio is putting together as both a writer and producer. In the past he’s been connected with more of Fox’s Marvel Universe as well. This deal by Fox will allow him to create, in theory, a fully interlocking universe in their films. With the mutants alone at his fingertips there are plenty of ways to reach out with teams such as ‘X-Force‘ and ‘X-Factor’ though when you draw the ‘Fantastic Four’ into the mix you get more cosmic options put at your disposal.

I have a lot of ideas on how to built those brands and do what everybody is thinking of these days: Be like Marvel, I want to be able to build stories over multiple movies.

Being ‘like’ Marvel shouldn’t be too difficult when you have Marvel characters to choose from. Could the idea here be to fully mimic Marvel and go cosmic? I’m pretty sure with the X-Men come the ability to use the Shi’ar empire and with the Fantastic Four we could see Annihilus and a version of the Annihilation Wave down the line. Much of X-Factor’s time was also spent in space when Havok was leading the time giving even more options to tie in a fully universal aspect. With enough films they could even fast forward a bit or give us a future story showing us Reed and Sue’s child, Franklin Richards, who also just happens to be a powerful mutant. Also, just to throw it out there it’s not as if Phoenix only ever died just once and she’s quite the cosmic entity herself.

There is a lot of crossover potentials in the galaxy out there though just as much potential on Earth itself. Dr. Doom has in the past had a fixation with The Scarlet Witch due to her powers, though she won’t be appearing quite yet. Speaking of Doom, both he and Magneto have teamed up in the past. I’m not sure who owns the rights to Namor, but the Sub-Mariner has popped up as a villain and hero and has worked with both camps as well so would be a great character to introduce.

While it won’t happen for a while, I do look forward to Iceman and the Human Torch being on screen together and exchanging witty banter. What do you think folks? Will a ‘Fantastic Four’ and ‘X-Men’ crossover work? Or are we still too far out on Marvel’s first family even showing up to have any specific hopes?

Share your thoughts on which story line you’d love to see a crossover film based off of below!

Source: The Hollywood Reporter