There's one major difference between Sony's overly-ambitious and ultimately unsuccessful franchise plans for The Amazing Spider-Man, and what 20th Century Fox is doing with the X-Men and Fantastic Four. That major difference is the presence of Bryan Singer, who has been leading the wildly lucrative X-Men movies since 2000 for the most part, and continues to do so with next year's X-Men: Apocalypse. So if the plan is to eventually crossover the X-Men and the rebooted Fantastic Four as has been teased in the past, Singer is who Fox is going to entrust to make that happen.
Speaking with Yahoo Movies, Singer admits that the FF/X-Men crossover is being discussed, but he's also being careful that they don't get too far ahead of themselves, especially since the Fantastic Four and X-Men: Apocalypse movies are both risky projects that must come first...
"That would be a natural match-up because they’re both ensemble films and there is a natural mechanism by which to do it....But we have to see how the films turn out. How [X-Men Apocalypse] turns out, how Fantastic Four plays, to really understand what kind of desire and how that would really work. I think to just say ‘You’re going to do it’ is kind of a mistake. I think you have to see how the films evolve before you make that decision to completely commit to that. But there are those ideas in play."
As for what that connecting mechanism will be?
"It deals with time. That’s all I’m going to say."
Given that the X-Men movies have each taken place in different decades, and the Fantastic Four are known time travelers, it's not a surprise to learn that time is going to be at the center of any team-up. Perhaps a run-in with the multiverse-spanning Kang the Conqueror is in order?
Fantastic Four opens August 7. X-Men Apocalypse opens May 27, 2016.
