No fox does own them. They were sold to them. Much like Sony does. Those rights were sold to them not on a leasing issue. The terms in the contracts based on reporting from decades ago is as long as the studio is in active development of a movie the rights don’t revert. That’s not a lease. It’s part of the deal that says you own this in peepituity but after X amount of years they’d revert back. So in theory as long as fox is doing something X-men related then they keep them and own them lock stock and barrel.
Sony is leading Spider-Man to marvel right now. And there are terms to that leasing agreement. Marvel didn’t extend anything for amazing to pop off.
If Comcast buys the properties then they get the rights. Marvel studios doesn’t have any say on what fox does with them or whom they sell them too because marvel studios doesn’t own them and never did. You can’t lease what’s not yours to begin with.
You're right it wasn't ASM, Marvel wanted Galactus x
@Silver Surfer for daredevil extension.
It's really based on how the contract is worded and made. Marvel still owns the characters, or else they couldn't keep making comics about them. Fox holds the license to make movies for those characters. Therefore, Fox does not "own" anything. Since Fox does not own the characters, they cannot sell them.
A situation similar to this happened a while back with Marvel Heroes. Marvel revoked the license, then the company closed it's doors for the last time. So there was no destination for the license at that point.
In the case of the characters that are licensed out, Marvel can't just revoke them at any time. They only revert if they are not used for a certain amount of time as we've already mentioned. However, if the studio that holds the license ceases to exist, then the license becomes moot, because, like with Marvel Heroes, the license holder no longer exists.
If another company buys Fox, the license could remain (depending on the wording of the contract), but only if the new owner keeps Fox intact, and only staff of that studio could work on the projects. So if, for example, Comcast bought Fox, and left it intact, only Fox could be involved with making the movie. They couldn't make the movie at Universal.
This of course also depends on where the license lies, and whether that's with Fox studio company, or 21st Century Fox. If it lies with 21st Century Fox, which is the highest level, there's no way for anyone else to preserve the license, since that entity would cease to exist in any form of buyout.
Ultimately this is all just
wild speculation until the contract turns up on the internet or Bob Iger clears things up for some random reason.
