Bleeding Cool: Would Marvel Really Cancel Fantastic Four To Snub Fox?

[Horizon]

It does seem that Marvel publishing is really pushing the Marvel Studios characters over those characters licensed by other studios, which makes it ironic that Spider-Man and X-Men (both All New and Uncanny) outsell the Avengers titles month in and month out. (Save for events.)

[Carabas]

I wonder how much it would cost Fox to go in the opposite direction and simply buy the X-Men and FF comic publishing rights from Marvel.

Well, they're Disney property now, and I'd say that Disney might license those rights out for a limited time, say four years or so, assuming Fox is prepared to pay ridiculous amounts of money for something that isn't really worth very much.

Either way, there's not enough money in the world for Fox to simply buy them anymore than that you can go up to your neighbour and buy his signed Beatles album if he's not of a mind to sell it.

[jphamlore]

An alternate explanation is that putting characters on hiatus is a regular part of Marvel's and Disney's playbook and it just happens to be the Fantastic Four's turn.

Disney is a company that pulls classics from distribution threatening parents that they better buy them now or their children might miss them their entire childhood.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_Vault

Marvel "killed" Thor and he didn't have a regular book for years.

Marvel "killed" Steve Rogers and replaced him with Bucky.

Marvel "killed" Peter Parker in both the 616 and Ultimates universes and replaced him in the 616 universe with a supervillain posing as Spider-Man.

Marvel has tried top-tier creators such as Waid, JMS, Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch, and Hickman on Fantastic Four. Most recent efforts have portrayed Reed Richards as almost literally a god which in my opinion might be something of a problem in a team book that is supposedly about a family. Hickman is the recent writer who in my opinion struck the best balance, but his story might as well be the final Fantastic Four story. It is long overdue for a hiatus.

[Peter Parker]

Whose to say Johnny Storm doesn't have a biracial son out there.

Battlescars 2, barf!

[ManaByte]

It does seem that Marvel publishing is really pushing the Marvel Studios characters over those characters licensed by other studios, which makes it ironic that Spider-Man and X-Men (both All New and Uncanny) outsell the Avengers titles month in and month out. (Save for events.)

In April:
All New X-Men #26 - 58,918
Uncanny X-Men #20 - 55,359
Avengers #28 - 52,808

They out-sold Avengers, yes, but it's not by a huge margin. Only reason Amazing Spider-Man #1 did 500k last month is because of investment collectors buying 10 copies from their shops.

[ScottSummers]

No way. Sure they are wrong on things but they are more often right

They broke the Wolverine death story arc like a year before Marvel announced it, and they have been on fire on calling DC's problems with losing talent before it's ever publicly announced, breaking news on creative teams new books, and cancelled books as well

Yeah they do get some things wrong, but they have a great track record for getting more right than wrong

Yeah, but that's all spin and opinion. These are otherwise very stable companies. They are ruled by emotion like whimsical Gods on mount Olympus.

Ult. Fantastic Four is getting cancelled because of sales. It's a great concept, in my opinion, but it didn't find an audience. Including me because I never actually bought it.

Regular Fantastic Four is nowhere near cancellation territory. And death of Wolverine they've been setting up for over a year with powerless and his other recent arcs. And they advertised the sh** out of Death of Superman. Of course they're doing it for this. It's going to be the biggest event since, maybe ever. That's why they are hyping it now. They want lines around the block.

This is classic reading too much into things based on rumors and hearsay.

It's also a classic business strategy to shelve a product to create demand.

[AcesX1X]

It's not Disney that's the problem, it's Fox. It doesn't matter if Disney offers them $100 billion, Fox isn't interested in giving up the licenses as they see them as tools to print money for them on an annual basis.

Sony is the same way, they say they'll never give up Spidey (unless their financial situation worsens...), but Disney has a good relationship with them regarding Spider-Man. A few years ago Iger stuck a deal with Sony where Disney makes all the money off merchandise in exchange for Marvel having no real say in the direction of the movie franchise.

how exactly is FOX the problem. FOX and sony did marvel a FAVOR and saved their asses by buying the movie rights. and now that marvel is in better standing, they want to be ungrateful. FOX is only doing what they paid to do: make x-men and ff movies.

[Joe Acro]

No need to have two threads on the same topic.