User blog comment:Mr. Xemnas/2 seperate marevl cinematic universe's?????/@comment-1895174-20130201050316/@comment-1895174-20130203044355

The difference between what the X-Men franchise can do and what Nolan's Batman franchise, the Star Wars prequels, and the Hobbit movies did - and that boils down to time. 16 years separate Return of the Jedi and The Phantom Menace, 9 years separate The Return of the King and The Hobbit, and 8 years separate Batman & Robin and Batman Begins''. It's reasonable there would be renewed interest since it's been so long since we had anything new from them.

But the X-Men? If FOX were to wait so long to make a new X-Men movie, regardless of whether or not it is a reboot or not, the rights would revert back to Marvel. Because of this, FOX is forced to pump out X-Men films on a regular basis in order to keep making them. So the reaction to each new film announced is going to be less "Oooo...a new one" and more "Oh...another one?" with each successive release.

It's worth noting that, next to the James Bond, the X-Men franchise is the oldest franchise out there consistently putting out new films. And while Bond definitely shows that a franchise can have considerable longevity, it also the outlier in the whole thing, so comparing any franchise's prospects to it is a bit unfair to begin with. But we have to look at one of the reasons why the Bond films have lasted so long, and there are two reasons tantamount to that - 1) successfully recovering from losing the lead actor, and 2) not caring much about continuity anyway. We've already seen how superhero movies handle the latter (reboots), but the big question is whether or not they can successfully replace Hugh Jackman. That's to be seen, but it hasn't worked well for most franchises in the past (or even this one, if you want to consider James McAvoy replacing Jackman as the lead in First Class).

And, just for the record, the Bond franchise has gone into periods of inactivity before (primarily on each side of Brosnan's tenure as 007) that would kill the X-Men franchise.