20th Century Fox had so many opportunities to do something great with all the properties that they owned, but they too more than a decade to really understand that. They only started to make great movies consecutively in the latter half of their run right before Disney bought them. The last two X-Men movies haven’t been loved by the fans and that’s why it was the right time for Marvel to take over. They already did justice with Daredevil, and now it’s time that they do the same with Fantastic Four & the X-Men.
But you’d actually be surprised to know that Fox had plans for these properties to crossover in one single film. They’ve never really done something good involving the Fantastic Four but they might have! Apparently, they were planning to bring all of their arsenal together way before Avengers: Endgame could give us the “Assemble” moment! It would probably have come out sometime after to Marvel’s The Avengers if not before.
Just a little while ago, Kevin Smith’s Fatman Beyond podcast had the writer of Rim of the World, Thor, and X-Men: First Class, Zack Stentz on the show. He revealed the fact that he had submitted a script for the aforementioned ensemble. He said:
“My ex-partner and I, when we were working at Fox and we were working on X-Men: First Class, we did a secret movie for them that, I can’t tell you what the plot was, but I can tell you that it used all of the characters, all of the Marvel characters that Fox had at the time in 2011. It used the X-Men. It used the Fantastic Four. It used Daredevil. It used Deadpool. Daredevil was still at Fox at the time. We almost had Paul Greengrass directing it which would’ve been so cool but he had another project to do instead. It didn’t end up going but it was a script I was really proud of and it would’ve been really good.
This was at Fox in 2011, which doesn’t really exist anymore, so maybe they won’t sue me for revealing. Even though, I didn’t reveal what it was called.”
Well, what we’ve been told there was only a part of the epic story that would have come to life. Apparently, Fox’s big crossover event would have been a big Civil War-esk movie pitting the X-Men and the Fantastic Four against each. THR has reported that the movie would have Johnny Storm as the reason for this fight as he accidentally destroyed part of New York in pursuit of Molecule Man.
Just like we had the Sokovia Accords in Civil War, here it would have been the Superhuman Registration Act, legislation that’d closely moderate what powered beings can and cannot do. There would have been a massive battle between Wolverine & Mr. Fantastic. Surprisingly, Reed would have managed to cut off Wolvie’s Adamantium-laced arms. How ironic! The movie would have ended with Skrulls invading Earth!
After this was done, there was another attempt at creating something like this again. Stentz continued:
“The other thing that’s never going to happen is the version that Ash and I did of the Fantastic Four. Josh Trank, who ended up doing the Fantastic Four that we saw in the theaters, we were supposed to be writing the script for him but nobody told him that we were doing it. So, when he officially signed on he was like, ‘Why are you imposing these other writers on me? I want to use my own writer. I wanna do my own script.’ And he did his version instead. It was one of those hammer blows to our career at the time, even though we had gotten paid, because I was so freakin’ proud of that script. It was how the Fantastic Four were almost the Fantastic Five except a young man named Victor von Doom was just too damaged and f—ed up to be part of them. It was a script I was very proud of. Josh Trank didn’t wanna do it.”
THR also reported that Fox hired comics writer Warren Ellis to pen a separate X-Men vs. Fantastic Four movie after all this went to bed. But that didn’t happen and we don’t have the details of it either. Now hopefully Marvel may be able to give us an event like this!
