Stan Lee Speaks Out On The Disney And Fox Deal

The Disney 21st Century Fox deal has many splits, but there is one prolific Marvel creator who couldn’t be happier.

That would be Marvel and comics legend Stan Lee, who was involved in creating many of the characters that are being brought back home. After the blockbuster deal became official, Lee expressed his excitement about what it means for Marvel Studios, the X-Men, and the Fantastic Four.

“A truly great piece of news!” Lee told Newsarama. “Now characters such as the X-Men and the Fantastic Four can come home to the place where they belong. It’s vitally important to have the Marvel characters under one roof. And now, as great as they were before, I can’t wait to see the wonders that will unfold!”

Lee recently told fans he thought Marvel would eventually get everything back under their roof, and it turns out he was spot on. No one really expected it to happen so soon grant you, but few ever complained about something happening ahead of schedule, at least when movies are concerned.

As part of the deal Disney (and subsequently Marvel) get the film rights back for the X-Men characters and the Fantastic Four characters. That of course not only includes the main cast of those franchises, like Wolverine, Storm, Invisible Woman, and Human Torch, but it also includes the side characters, locations, and factions associated with them.

That substantially opens up the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as previous off limits villains and areas of space are now available for use. Things like the Shi’ar empire can easily be implemented into Guardians of the Galaxy and any other space-faring characters Marvel brings to the big screen (Captain Marvel, Nova, etc). It also means the Negative Zone is fair game, opening up the opportunity to have the Avengers face off against someone like Annihilus.

The big thing though is the crossover potential of popular characters, and there are a myriad of ways to bring in X-Men like Wolverine, Jean Grey, Cyclops, The Thing, and more.

Of course, none of that is going to happen overnight, as the deal is still far away from being finalized. In the meantime though, it is quite fun to imagine the possibilities.