Everyone wants what Marvel has: a cinematic universe that connects with all its characters that can lead up to things like the $2.6 billion-grossing “Avengers: Endgame.” But few, if any, have pulled it off in the superhero realm. We’d heard of rumors of a Fantastic Four and X-Men crossover circa 2014 while Simon Kinberg, writer/producer of the X-Men franchise was shepherding “Fantastic Four” to the screen, but it turns out Fox had plans for an even bigger crossover before that.
While appearing on Kevin Smith’s Fatman Beyond podcast, to promote his new Netflix series “Rim Of The World,” screenwriter Zack Stentz—who wrote “Thor,” and “X-Men: First Class,” and has worked on many superhero films over the years—revealed he once wrote a gigantic crossover movie for Fox that contained basically every significant Marvel property they owned.
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Asked about which film he wrote that he’d love to see the most despite knowing it would never get made, Stentz didn’t hesitate and brought up this crossover movie written in 2011. For context, this was even before “The Avengers,” came out—the year both “Thor,” “Captain America: The First Avenger” and “X-Men: First Class” were released.
“My ex-partner and I, when we were working at Fox, and we were working on ‘X-Men: First Class’, we did a secret movie for them that, I can’t tell you what the plot was, but I can tell you that it used all of the characters, all of the Marvel characters that Fox had at the time in 2011,” he explained. “It used the X-Men. It used the Fantastic Four. It used Daredevil. It used Deadpool. Daredevil was still at Fox at the time.”
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Fox almost had a considerable director attached to the project as well according to the screenwriter. “Jason Bourne” helmer, Paul Greengrass. “We almost had Paul Greengrass directing it which would’ve been so cool, but he had another project to do instead. It didn’t end up going but it was a script I was really proud of, and it would’ve been really good.”
Stentz also revealed that he and his then writing partner Ashley Edward Miller, also wrote a “Fantastic Four” movie, but it was ultimately something that director Josh Trank passed on when he came on board to direct the film.
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“The other thing that’s never going to happen is the version that Ash and I did of the ‘Fantastic Four,’” Stentz explained. “Josh Trank, who ended up doing the ‘Fantastic Four’ that we saw in the theaters, we were supposed to be writing the script for him, but nobody told him that we were doing it. So, when he officially signed on, he was like, ‘Why are you imposing these other writers on me? I want to use my own writer. I wanna do my own script.’ And he did his version instead. It was one of those hammer blows to our career at the time, even though we had gotten paid, because I was so freakin’ proud of that script. It was how the Fantastic Four were almost the Fantastic Five except a young man named Victor von Doom was just too damaged and f—ed up to be part of them. It was a script I was very proud of. Josh Trank didn’t wanna do it.”
Stentz, however, clarified that he holds no grudges against Trank and would probably feel the same way if another screenplay was imposed on him.”Even though it hurt like a motherf—er that they didn’t use our script, I don’t blame him,” he said.
It surprises this project’s existence never leaked before. Maybe it’ll leak one day, who knows and fans will get a fun ‘what if?’ to read. At the very least it’s interesting to note that Fox was already noticing Marvel’s road to “The Avengers” in the works and perhaps wanted to try and get in on that big-event crossover movie action. Assume it’ll happen one day now Fox is part of Disney, but given Marvel’s schedule and Kevin Feige’s recent comments, we might be waiting several years before any of that happens.
Watch the specific moment with Stentz below.
