In the following interview with Word Balloon Rob Liefeld discusses quite a few things, including his 8 year stint at Marvel, his thoughts on DC's New 52 and his first opportunity to draw Batman in an issue of Hawk And Dove. But most interestingly the writer suggest that Marvel have been pushing the X-Men properties (movies and comics) to the side to focus their attention on the characters that fall under the Disney umbrella. This part of the discussion comes in around the 30 minute mark..
He covers quite a few topics so to paraphrase, basically he says that short of a billion dollar check from Marvel/Disney to Fox the rights to the X-Men are not going anywhere. He says that because of this Marvel is only focused on The Avengers and their characters and that the X-Men (comics) only survive because of their rich history. On the movie side of things he says Marvel had 3 movies in theaters this Summer (First Class, Thor and Captain America) but you would think it was only two. He says there were no Fist Class toys, figures, Lego etc because that would have directly competed with the likes of Captain America toys etc. There is more, be sure to have a listen.
Now I'm not 100% on all the ins and outs of the deal FOX have with Marvel over the X-Men so can't comment too much on this. Up until now though I pretty much thought FOX had the final say in everything to do with the X-Men, including marketing/licencing. Liefeld certainly seems to be suggesting differently. He is also suggesting that Marvel have more of a hand in FOX's movie output than I ever realized. What do you guys make of all this?
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