Hollywood What If Chapter 584
Unlike Iron Man and other characters from the MCU, the whole X-Men franchise was currently under the ownership of 20th Century Fox.
To make it clear, when Marvel Comics was in debt to the bank, the company sold the film rights of X-Men to 20th Century Fox. To make it even sadder, 20th Century Fox got the last laugh since the contract was more in their favor. Marvel Comics didn't have a choice, as they were forced by the bank to sign the contract just to make money.
Because of this, even though X-Men grossed over $480 million, 20th Century Fox would take basically all of the profit while giving Marvel Comics some crumbs to lick.
Marvel Comics only earned money through licensing fees and merchandise-related revenue, but this amount was still small compared to the overall net worth of X-Men.
The analysis was that the net worth of X-Men was around $10–15 billion. $6 billion came from the global box office that the franchise generated. Unfortunately, Marvel Comics could only see a glimpse of that money.
So yeah, 20th Century Fox won that business deal.
Marvel Comics had understandable dissatisfaction regarding that. Even now, despite the two companies collaborating, the contract regarding X-Men still has not changed.
Obviously, 20th Century Fox wouldn't change it since it was a huge deal involving money. The company had to ensure that the money would remain theirs.
This was business. From Marvel Comics' point of view, it was a loss. But from 20th Century Fox's perspective, it was a win.
20th Century Fox and its executives would be crazy if they agreed to a contract that would lessen their profits. So they maintained the status quo and continued to milk X-Men till the very end.
By the way, in the original timeline, one of the reasons why Marvel Comics started its own film studio (Marvel Studios) was because it realized that licensing its characters to other film studios brought limited profit compared to producing films themselves. Of course, Marvel Comics had to shoulder the consequences, but this decision led them to create the best cinematic universe of the era. The Marvel Cinematic Universe was the start of their success. Not even the Spider-Man trilogy gave them that status.
But Marvel Studios' path was not that simple. Even though they owned the movies themselves, they still had to work with a distributor to release their movies. And well, the distributor had to take at least a 40% box office cut.
Paramount Pictures and Universal Pictures had around 40–50% box office cuts when they distributed the first batch of MCU movies.
Paramount Pictures distributed Iron Man, Iron Man 2, Thor, and Captain America: The First Avenger.
Universal Pictures distributed The Incredible Hulk. Perhaps this deal was because Universal Pictures originally held the rights to Hulk, but due to the failure of Ang Lee's Hulk (2003), Marvel Comics got the rights back. So maybe, to make it a fair deal, Universal Pictures was the one that distributed The Incredible Hulk.
Honestly, Paramount Pictures had a chance to acquire Marvel since they probably saw the potential of their characters. Perhaps another What-If timeline would happen if Paramount Pictures had acquired Marvel instead of Walt Disney.
To be fair, Marvel Comics only had a few choices. Marvel Studios was a profitable move, but it still needed backing, so being owned by one of the Big Six was probably part of the plan.
Anyway, Sony-Columbia could have been chosen since it had experience distributing Spider-Man and handling merchandise related to the superhero. If Marvel Comics were to choose a mother company, it should have been one that could help their business grow.
Almost every character in Marvel Comics was profitable if licensed to be made into sellable toys. Naturally, Marvel Comics was looking for a studio that could help them sell more merchandise and toys related to their superhero characters.
Sony-Columbia had selling capabilities since they worked with Spider-Man.
Universal Pictures also worked on selling Jurassic Park toys.
Paramount Pictures also worked on selling Transformers and G.I. Joe.
Warner Brothers had DC Comics… God knows how many Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman toys they sold.
20th Century Fox also had X-Men and Fantastic Four to work with.
As for Walt Disney, this was probably the best in this kind of stuff, since Walt Disney had so many kid-related products that they sold to the masses.
The Big Six had distribution channels. Of course, they could distribute toys and other merchandise.
The best choices for Marvel Comics were Warner Brothers and Walt Disney, since these two could help them better than the others.
Unfortunately, Warner Brothers already had DC Comics, so Marvel was not against it when Walt Disney started their acquisition. In their opinion, Walt Disney was the best studio they could lean on. That endeavor was fruitful at first… but capitalism destroyed the reputation of the MCU franchise.
The early partnership between Marvel Studios and Walt Disney was indeed a game-changer, but as the years passed, cracks began to show. With Walt Disney's aggressive push for rapid releases of movies and TV shows, and boring storytelling, critics and longtime fans started to voice concerns about the franchise's lack of creativity. The MCU was becoming stagnant, especially after Avengers: Endgame.
Box office numbers fluctuated, and whispers of "superhero movie fatigue" grew louder. Yes, people were growing tired of watching superhero movies.
When the major characters in the MCU disappeared, the franchise lost its luster.
Still, from a business perspective, Marvel's alignment with Walt Disney was probably the right decision. No other studio could have helped Marvel elevate its status the way Walt Disney did.
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[Yeah, this chapter is just based on my opinion. Don't take it seriously.]