Following the historic deal between Marvel Studios and Sony Pictures on sharing the film rights to Spider-Man, many of us have been hoping for something similar to happen between Marvel and 20th Century Fox on X-Men and Fantastic Four. But it doesn't look like that’s happening anytime soon, as Fox is apparently planning a soft reboot for X-Men on their own.
However, a different kind of deal already took place between the two studios in the recent past that we actually didn't have any knowledge of until now. This deal was revealed by Deadpool co-scribe Paul Wernick during a recent event in Los Angeles (via The Playlist).
According to Wernick, while they had picked Stefan Kapicic's Colossus for Deadpool for conventional narrative reasons, Brianna Hildebrand's Negasonic Teenage Warhead had been chosen only for her incredible moniker:
We were looking down the list of the 400 [X-Men] characters that Fox owns, and NTW jumped out and we were like, “Yes. I don't care what her powers are. She's gonna be in the movie.”
That’s the reason why the movie version of the character is totally different from the one in the comics. While the character's original powers are telepathic and precognitive, the movie version has the power to detonate atomic bursts from her body.
But in order to alter the character, Fox had to ask for permission from Marvel, who weren't willing to give it for free. In exchange, they demanded the rights to Ego The Living Planet, a character that will be portrayed by Kurt Russell in James Gunn's upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2! Wernick said:
Kurt Russell’s [Ego the Living Planet] in the new Guardians movie was the character that Fox swapped with Marvel to [change] Negasonic Teenage Warhead’s powers.
It’s always good to hear that the two studios have played nice with each other, at least in this particular matter. We also shouldn't forget that Fox and Marvel are working together for the upcoming FX series Legion. A few little steps in the same direction could someday lead toward seeing the Avengers and the X-Men together on the big screen.
