X-Men: Days of Future Past - What Does Quicksilver Mean?

With the announcement today that X-Men: Days of Future Past will introduce Quicksilver to the film, fans have immediately begun to ask: What does this mean for The Avengers and, potentially, for the larger cinematic universe that Marvel Studios, 20th Century Fox and Sony Pictures Entertainment are rumored to be developing? It's already been established that the rights to the two characters are jointly held, and the Marvel Studios and Fox are both able to utilize the character, provided they play by a set of ground rules that basically prohibit each franchise from directly referencing key elements of the other. For example, they couldn't use the word "mutant" in The Avengers 2, or reference the fact that their father is Magneto. That makes for a very divided family, as both Magneto and their half-sister Polaris are firmly in the Fox camp and could not be used or even referenced in a Marvel Studios film. The answer to the question above is complex, of course; there are a few options as to how it might go down.

First of all, it's distinctly possible that Evan Peters could be quietly lining up along with a "sister" (perhaps Saorise Ronan?) to play Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch in both the Avengers and X-Men films. This would jive with Mark Millar's comments that he and Fox wanted to make X-Men movies that would be compatible with, if not explicitly set in the same world as, Marvel Studios's films. Connecting the franchises would also have the ancillary effect of combining the Fox "universe" with the Sony films, as Marvel and Sony have been working together to hide Easter eggs in the Spider-Man films and Iron Man tie-in games. So far, none of them has made it all the way to the big screen (although an Amazing Spider-Man reference in the Iron Man 3 movie game did appear in the final cut) but it's really only a matter of time before we see Oscorp Tower in the Marvel skyline. Having the same actors play the same characters in franchises owned by the two different studios is one way to link them together, even though they can't make overt references to one another. It's one we predicted a while back, and still the move we stand by as the most clever way to take advantage of the characters' unique rights situation. The other possibility is that they could have two pairs of siblings, each playing the characters in the different film universes. It's interesting--the concept of different actors playing the same character in dueling franchises is an odd one, and quite rare...but if it kicked of with X-Men: Days of Future Past (a time-travel movie in which there are at least two and possibly more characters who will be played by different actors in dual iterations of the same characters), there'd be some odd poetic justice to it. That's not quite the same thing, though--and neither is the simple act of recasting a part with a new actor, something Marvel is hardly averse to. This is more like what you sometimes see with public domain characters; it's happened plenty of times, of course, that there were multiple, unrelated versions of Sherlock Holmes or Alice in Wonderland being adapted to the screen at the same time. Actually, those are both happening now, with Warner Bros. developing their next sequel to Sherlock Holmes starring Robert Downey, Jr. and Disney is working on a second Alice in Wonderland film based on the Tim Burton version of the story--while the BBC chugs on with Sherlock and ABC has Once Upon a Time: Wonderland ready to debut. The fact that there's an American version of Sherlock (CBS's Elementary) that's doing essentially the same thing at the same time seems worth mentioning, too. Those are hardly direct competitors, though; television and the movies are very different markets, as we're sure to hear more about in the coming weeks and months as Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. kicks off its first-season PR campaign.

The closest comparison I can come up with right off the top of my head is James Bond. Back in 1967, the character appeared in two different films by two different studios: Casino Royale, in which he was played by David Niven (and others--it was a weird movie); and You Only Live Twice, in which the legendary super-spy was portrayed by Sean Connery. The movies came out less than two months apart and the producers certainly didn't have a cozy relationship. How did it happen? We'll quote here from a popular online James Bond resource:

In the mid 1960s, American producer Charles K. Feldman acquired the film rights to Casino Royale. After a failed attempt to have it made as part of the official series, he decided to turn it into a James Bond spoof instead. The film opens with David Niven playing a retired 007. M begs him to come back to them, and when Bond refuses, his mansion is promptly blown up! M is killed in the explosion and Bond takes over his position. He decides to rename all of the agents to James Bond to confuse the enemy. This results in David Niven, Terence Cooper, Woody Allen, Joanna Pettet, Daliah Lavi, Peter Sellers and Ursula Andress all playing James Bond!

Even if they end up going with the "two different sets of actors" approach and don't connect the movies, there's nothing to suggest that the film studios have a bad relationship as much as that they're either taking advantage of the loophole afforded them for fun or for continuity reasons. Doctor Who had a similar situation in 1965, when the non-canonical film Dr. Who and the Daleks was released starring Peter Cushing as the titular Doctor. The first time the famed character had been filmed either in color or in widescreen, the film was nevertheless something of an ugly stepchild, with Cushing's iteration coming in between serials featuring the first TV Doctor, William Hartnell. Cushing would play the character again in a sequel, Daleks – Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D., which would be released two months before Hartnell's last appearance as the character in October 1966. Totally random trivia: Only once have two different actors received an Academy Award for playing the same fictional character in two different movies: Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro, for playing Don Vito Corleone in the first and second installments of The Godfather.