14 DAY TRIAL // The war between Marvel and Fox, the studio responsible for turning some of its characters into movies is getting out of hand. The two giants are duking it out behind the scenes and the rivalry seems to be affecting movies and comics alike, but ultimately, it's just hurting the fans.
Marvel has decided to pull the plug on Fox or at least sabotage its efforts. One Marvel comic author, Chris Claremont, has revealed at the Phoenix Comic Con that the company has issued a warning to its writers not to create any new X-Men characters because these would subsequently be owned by Fox as well, due to their agreement.
Marvel told its writers to stop creating X-Men characters as they would become the property of Fox as well
Bleeding Cool has the story which claims that Marvel is trying to limit the material Fox is getting for its movies by cutting it from the source. “I have to say quite honestly as I understand it now the X department is forbidden to create new characters,” Clairmont is quoted as saying. “All because all new characters become the film property of Fox,” he added.
It's also been revealed that all promotional and merchandising efforts for the X-Men franchise are going to be stopped “for the foreseeable future because, why promote Fox material?”
Earlier this week, it was revealed that Marvel was planning to cancel the oldest running comic book series it has, the Fantastic Four, sometime in 2015. This was believed to be the direct result of poor sales of the series, but it's now looking as if Marvel is trying to further sabotage Fox, which is currently in the process of rebooting the story with a movie slated for a 2015 release.
Marvel is also killing off the Fantastic Four series just before the movie is launched
At the moment, the plans are to end the Fantastic Four series of comic books on 30 June 2015, which is before the release date of the rebooted F4 movie, scheduled to hit theaters on August 7.
If the two giants are at war, this could spell disaster for the upcoming cinematic projects based on super hero comic books. Marvel has already announced some pretty drastic moves, such as turning Thor into a woman, killing off Wolverine and retiring several other characters or replacing them altogether.
Since all of these characters serve as the source material for the Fox movie adaptations, it's become clear that Marvel is done playing nice and is trying to sabotage Fox by throwing them some weird curve balls.
Then again, Fox is not obliged to follow the story in the comics to the letter, having creative freedom. In fact, none of the movies they have made so far follows any comic book series to the letter. Instead, they choose to loosely base their stories on facts and characters already known to the public.
Either way, it's going to be interesting to watch Marvel's next move and Fox's answer to this aggressive campaign the comic book publisher is mounting.