Do the X-Men or Fantastic Four Make an Appearance in Avengers: Endgame?

As promised by directors Anthony and Joe Russo, no formerly Fox-controlled characters, including the X-Men and the Fantastic Four, surface in Avengers: Endgame.

“It would not have been,” Joe Russo told ComicBook.com when asked if it would have been possible to perform additional photography introducing characters belonging to those rights families after Disney completed its $71.3 billion acquisition of Fox’s entertainment assets March 20.

Because the deal was finalized so close to Endgame‘s finishing touches, “It would not have been logistically possible,” Joe said.

Endgame is instead the end of an 11-year, 22-movie saga started with 2008’s Iron Man. When Marvel’s merry mutants and its first family join the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it won’t be until during or after Phase Four, expected to launch with Black Widow in 2020.

“It’ll be a while. It’s all just beginning and the five-year plan that we’ve been working on, we were working on before any of that was set,” Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige told i09 earlier this month.

“So really it’s much more, for us, less about specifics of when and where [the X-Men will appear] right now and more just the comfort factor and how nice it is that they’re home. That they’re all back. But it will be a very long time.”

In July, Feige admitted he had “vague ideas” for the Marvel-backed X-Men franchise — ideas Marvel was legally prohibited from officially developing until the franchise rights were fully seized by Disney — telling Daily News the focus was instead on Captain Marvel, the Avengers: Infinity War sequel, and Spider-Man: Far From Home.

“Not until we’re given the word,” Feige said. “I have vague dreams and vague ideas. But right now, bringing to life the 10,000-plus characters that Marvel fully controls is what the gameplan is.”

Months later, when Marvel inched closer to acquiring the rights to such characters as Doctor Doom and Wolverine, Feige told MTV News, “The truth is, I’m excited for all of them. I’m excited, and it’s not just the marquee names you know — there are hundreds of names on those documents, on those agreements.”

Gaining access to all of those characters is “something I’ve been dreaming about for my almost 20 years at Marvel,” Feige added. “And it’s very exciting.”

Avengers: Endgame is now playing.

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