User blog comment:Sabilsadat/How Spider-Man and the X-Men "spiritually" may still exist in the Marvel Cinematic Universe/@comment-8284722-20141124040336/@comment-1713281-20141124052529

Can and will are two different things, and there's not a chance in Hell that any of them will be returned to Marvel within this decade.

Break it down:

-Fox owns the film rights to both X-Men and Fantastic Four. We know that the rights can revert; the rights for FF were at risk of reverting a few years ago before the pushed the reboot into production, and common theory is that X-Men has the same set-up. Now, I won't argue that Fantastic Four has a good chance to revert. The original pair of films were not stellar successes, and I don't know that audiences will go see a new reboot of a film they only marginally liked 10 years ago (Not to mention the irate reactions comic fans are having to all the changes to the mythos that Fox has announced). But the chances that we'll see those rights come back to Marvel in this decade? Slim-to-none. Sink or swim, Fox has already but a sequel for the FF reboot on the map for 2017. X-Men on the other hand, will likely never reboot, at least not within the foreseeable future. The Last Stand and Origins: Wolverine were both duds, but the last three films (First Class, The Wolverine and Days of Future Past) were all massively successful with both critics and audiences. X-Men is running strong, and Fox has no reason to give that up.

-Sony owns the live-action film rights to Spider-Man and his cast. This is an incredibly lopsided deal, because the rights are basically granted indefinitely. There's no revert period, so the rights are basically Sony's until they decided to give them up. And while you can point out that the new reboot series has had far worse critical reception and lower box office than the Raimi trilogy, and that Sony seems to be stumbling over themselves to build out a multi-film universe from one character franchise, the fact of the matter is that Spidey makes them cash, and I highly doubt that they will give him up without running him into the ground first.

-Additionally, Disney is still working out kinks from previous deals for Namor and The Hulk. While Marvel now owns the rights to these characters, previous deals are still in place with Universal regarding their distribution. So, any solo film starring either of those two characters would have to be distributed by Universal, meaning Disney won't get their cut, and that definitely won't happen.

In all of those cases, yes, Disney could just keep throwing money at those three studios until they agreed to give the rights back over. But the other three companies aren't stupid. They know that Disney and Marvel have a success on their hands with the MCU, and they would surely be holding out for a large pay off if Disney ever came knocking.

And again, why would they? Not including the dozens of properties that Marvel has access to that were never sold off, rights have reverted from multiple studios, giving Marvel back properties like The Punisher, Man-Thing, Daredevil & Elektra, Blade, Howard the Duck, Power Pack, and Ghost Rider. Hell, Captain America, Dr. Strange, Nick Fury/S.H.I.E.L.D., and Hulk are all reverts as well. Disney and Marvel have hundreds of stories they can tell, even without Spider-Man or Wolverine.

The point is, Disney is in no hurry to write massive checks out for 5 franchises, most of whom are pretty unimportant. Just wait till the 2020s, and you'll probably get your wish.