When Marvel was facing bankruptcy in the 1990s, the company offloaded the film rights for characters like Spider-Man, the X-Men, and Fantastic Four to the highest bidders. The deals were terrible, as they essentially meant Marvel would forever lose the ability to make films featuring some of its most iconic superheroes.
When Marvel Studios was formed, Kevin Feige only had the likes of Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor to play with, but managed to turn those and other fairly obscure heroes into A-Listers during (and following) the build to 2012's The Avengers.
Since then, the likes of Daredevil, The Punisher, and Ghost Rider have returned home, as have the X-Men and Fantastic Four. Spider-Man, meanwhile, is part of a deal with Sony Pictures that was made after the studio repeatedly dropped the ball on the web-spinner.
The door has been opened to team-ups we never dreamed of seeing, including Spider-Man and the Human Torch. Talking at a roundtable with select press ahead of The Fantastic Four: First Steps' release, Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige hinted at that meeting being somewhere on the horizon.
"We didn't do chemistry reads, but whenever we cast it is with that blue sky dream in mind of one day being able to do that. And that's a great example. That's one of the key relationships in Marvel comics is Johnny Storm and Peter Parker," the executive teased. "And we've never been able to come close to it before and now it is in the realm of possibility. That's exciting. That gets me up in the morning."
Feige has already said Marvel Studios is looking to make up for past mistakes with a comic-accurate take on the X-Men. With The Fantastic Four: First Steps, the studio got the opportunity to do right by Galactus after Fox portrayed him as a cloud in 2007's Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.
"I never looked at it as a redemption, but I did look at it as we had gotten to a point and I hope the audience had gotten to a point, and people making decisions at studios have gotten to a point, where the fear of something being silly is not a reason enough to not attempt it. And even for us going back, I think most things, the comics are not silly."
"I think they're cool, and I think it is awesome to bring to life. Loki's horns come to mind when we were doing the first Thor, and that was many years ago now, and it had been a handful of years from the Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer that had Galactus in it, and I thought, 'we don't want to hide it.' He's got gigantic, almost makes no sense, huge horns, and we need to embrace that. And we have an actor in [Tom Hiddleston] who can wear it, who can pull it off."
"In Ralph [Ineson], we have the same thing. So it is embracing that and knowing that those designs are awesome. Those designs stand the test of time over and over and over again for a reason."
A Spider-Man/ Human Torch team-up could and should happen in one of the next Avengers movies, though it's more likely to be Secret Wars, seeing as Tom Holland has yet to be announced for Doomsday. As for Galactus, time will tell whether he's a one-and-done big bad or more is planned for him in the MCU.
The Fantastic Four: First Steps arrives in theaters later this week.