The X-Men’s arrival in the Marvel Cinematic Universe may be inevitable, but it isn’t going to happen anytime soon.
Since the Disney/Fox merger was announced, we've been dreaming about seeing the mutants, the Fantastic Four, and the Avengers together on the big screen. We knew that it would take about 18 months to finalize the merger, but we still hoped that Marvel would work it out so that the Fox-owned characters could appear in the meantime.
This seemed reasonable to us, as the studio had already started making plans to cast Spider-Man in Captain America: Civil War before Sony had officially agreed to share rights to the character. However, the scenario is apparently quite different this time around.
At a recent Black Panther press junket, Vulture asked Kevin Feige to shed some light on the Disney/Fox merger. He responded that he couldn’t provide an update, because the parent company hadn’t given him one. He added that there could be no meetings about incorporating the X-Men and the Fantastic Four into the MCU until the deal is sealed:
I read about it in the press, like most people did"¦These are big deals, and certainly above my pay grade"¦The truth of the matter as I understand it is that the deal has to be figured out. There's been no communication. We're not thinking about it. We're focusing on everything we've already announced. If and when the deal actually happens, we'll start to think more about it. Until then, we have a lot to do.
Pressed further, Feige made it clear that there's no possibility that the Fox-owned characters will show up in Avengers: Infinity War, Ant-Man and the Wasp, Captain Marvel, or the untitled Avengers 4:
It would be years away. We've announced everything through 2019, so none of those would be adjusted.
