UPDATE: The denials are coming in fast and furious. Sources from both Fox and Marvel have denied that the Fantastic Four property has changed hands. Look like the first family of Marvel will continue to stay at Fox. 

Original story below: 

I didn’t bury the lead on this one, it’s right there in the title: the Fantastic Four could now appear with the Avengers, Spider-Man, the Guardians of the Galaxy and everyone else under the control of Marvel Studios.

According to Den of Geek, this was a part of the deal in which Fox gained television rights to X-Men characters and apparently the deal is done. Fox is developing Legion and Hellfire shows and Marvel Studios is making a Fantastic Four film. The deal is said to also give Marvel access to Galactus, Doctor Doom and Silver Surfer. It’s actually already on the schedule as one of the untitled movies announced with ‘Ant-Man and The Wasp‘. This is huge for a few reasons.

  1. Marvel is at risk of losing some character name recognition with the contracts of the original cinematic Avengers running out and those actors getting older and wanting to move on. Sure, they could recast, but the studio has gotten away with very little recasting and I feel like they want to keep up the trend. Fantastic Four and Spider-Man are big enough names to reinvigorate the MCU into Phases 4, 5 and 6.
  2. Audiences will have a series climax with ‘Infinity Wars’ that will be hard to top. Thanos is one of Marvel’s biggest villains. There is a need to always raise the stakes and the first villain that comes to mind that is (literally) bigger than Thanos is Galactus, who is included in the deal. We’ve seen Galactus as a space cloud in an earlier movie, but that hardly counts. Marvel could pull off a legit Galactus as the next threat that brings all the characters together. If not, maybe we could finally get a truly threatening Doctor Doom, also reported to be included in the deal.
  3. Everyone wants to see the Thing fight the Hulk.

I never want to root for bad movies, but I have to admit that I was kind of happy to see that the last Spider-Man and Fantastic Four films performed poorly. The potential profits of these properties drive these deals and it had to be clear to Fox that no one really wanted to see the Fantastic Four 2 while Marvel saw the obvious value in having the film rights to these characters. These are exciting times!

Source: Comic Book Movie