Last month’s announcement that negotiations between Disney and 21st Century Fox over the latter's movie division had come to a halt seemed to come out of nowhere. It meant that, unbeknownst to anyone, 21st Century Fox had initiated discussions with Disney during the previous weeks or months.
However, after the startling announcement that talks had stalled, Disney returned to the table to join the fray against Sony and Comcast (the world’s largest media company). Comcast has since announced they dropped out of the negotiations.
According to CNBC, Disney and Fox are currently in the final stages of completing their arrangement. In fact, all that remains to be done is to sign the papers. CNBC added that the media companies are on glide path, ready to make a big announcement on Thursday, December 14.
For comic book movie fans, this is more than just a reason to rejoice that the X-Men and the Fantastic Four (and all affiliated characters) are included in this historic deal. They also have reason to wonder what might happen with projects like Deadpool, which made a killing at the box office.
We can see why. Disney isn't exactly in the business of making R-rated movies. Ryan Reynolds, Rob Liefeld, and James Mangold have all expressed concern about the future of R-rated comic book movies after the deal is done. Of course, they could be blowing it out of proportion, especially since Kevin Feige said back in June that R-rated films were welcome in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
It remains to be seen what will happen next. We don't believe that we can expect to see any mutants or Fantastic Four members in the MCU until the third Phase ends.
