Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-70.52.226.89-20141124001319/@comment-86.29.7.17-20141124051011

You've only just found that out? After the X-Men trllogy, the Wolverine spin-offs and the prequels, along with MCU's Phase One and the almost-complete Phase Two, it's only just clicked?

But yes, like others have said Fox currently holds the rights to make X-Men films, not Marvel themselves. Marvel sold-off the rights to loads of their franchises way back when. Fox also holds the rights to Fantastic Four movies. Sony notably has Spider-Man. And so on. Marvel has been slowly reacquiring the rights back to their stuff, but these days folks are rather reluctant to give them up since superhero films are such money-spinners. To the extent that a studio would rather reboot a franchise than let the rights revert back to Marvel because of a clause that says "if we don't make a film of Y for X years then you can have it back."

Marvel probably will get them back one day, but by that point the superhero fad will have passed by and Phase Five, the last part of the MCU, will be the subject of internet flame wars.