X-Men vs. Fantastic Four: Director Paul Greengrass Confirms Talks For Planned Fox-Marvel Movie

Filmmaker Paul Greengrass confirms talks with Fox about the never-made X-Men vs. Fantastic Four, a crossover between the two superhero teams and then-Fox-owned characters Deadpool and Daredevil. In 2019, Thor and X-Men: First Class screenwriter Zack Stentz revealed a secret movie that would have used “all of the Marvel characters that Fox had at the time in 2011” with the Jason Bourne and News of the World director at the helm. Sources would later describe the abandoned X-Men vs. Fantastic Four as an adaptation of the Marvel Comics storyline Civil War, which would become the basis for Marvel Studios’ Captain America: Civil War in 2016.

“They did talk to me about it,” Greengrass told the Happy Sad Confused podcast. “I wouldn’t say I was attached. [We] talked, and I thought about it, and in the end… [nothing happened].”

“[Ashley Edward Miller] and I, when we were working at Fox and we were working on X-Men: First Class, we did a secret movie for them that — I can’t tell you what the plot was — but I can tell you that it used all of the characters, all of the Marvel characters that Fox had at the time in 2011,” Stentz revealed on Fatman on Batman in 2019. “It used the X-Men. It used the Fantastic Four. It used Daredevil. It used Deadpool. Daredevil was still at Fox at the time.”

Stentz added, “We almost had Paul Greengrass directing it, which would’ve been so cool, but he had another project to do instead. It didn’t end up going, but it was a script I was really proud of, and it would’ve been really good.”

According to plot details uncovered by The Hollywood Reporter, the abandoned X-Men vs. Fantastic Four movie would have seen the fiery Human Torch spark a schism between the two teams after he goes nova in an attempt to apprehend the supervillain Molecule Man. The damage caused to Manhattan would trigger the Superhero Registration Act, splitting the involved characters on opposing sides.

One matchup would have pitted the metal-clawed mutant Wolverine against the malleable Mr. Fantastic, who transforms his hands into scissors and saws off his arms. In the end, the superheroes would make peace before a post-credits scene reveals the coming of an invasion by the shape-shifting alien Skrulls, according to the report.

In March 2019, Disney-owned Marvel Studios acquired the screen rights to the Fantastic Four and X-Men characters when The Walt Disney Company purchased 21st Century Fox. Last month, Marvel chief creative officer Kevin Feige announced a Fantastic Four reboot from Spider-Man director Jon Watts bringing the superhero family into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.