Kevin Feige on when they can start developing Fox’s Marvel characters

Unless you've been living under a rock, and honestly, I can't say I'd blame you, you likely know that Disney is set to acquire 20th Century Fox in a hugely expensive merger which will, among other things, bring Fox's Marvel properties home where they belong. Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige has been hesitant to comment on just how and when characters from the X-MEN and FANTASTIC FOUR franchises will be introduced to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but the Marvel chief recently spoke on Variety's Playback with Kris Tapley podcast and was asked whether or not he's been given the green-light to start developing stories surrounding these characters.

No, not yet, but we’ve been told it’s looking very, very good and could happen in the first six months of next year … The notion of the characters that had previously been under a Fox agreement coming back is great. It’s nice when a company that created all these characters can have access to all those characters. It’s unusual not to; Marvel’s been in a unique position to not have access to those characters for a long time … But in terms of actually thinking about it and actually planning things, we haven’t started that yet.

Although Kevin Feige says that it's possible that they'll begin discussing their new toys sometime next year, it's likely that we won't be seeing those characters join the MCU for a few years as Marvel Studios already has quite the full slate. It's been a decade since the MCU began with IRON MAN in 2008, and Kevin Feige is still amazed at the franchise's incredible rise to the top. "It’s surreal. In one way it’s incredibly satisfying. In the other way it’s nearly unbelievable from where we started," Feige said. "There were days when I wasn’t sure we would be able to get ‘Iron Man’ in theaters. There were days when I thought ‘Avengers’ was a pipe dream. And there were days after ‘Avengers’ where I thought, ‘Well, where do we go?'" The next film in the MCU will be CAPTAIN MARVEL which is set for a March 8, 2019 release.