5. How Marvel Managed To Use The Skrulls Without Fox
Marvel Studios
When it was first revealed back in 2017 that Captain Marvel would see the introduction of the Skrull, Marvel fans were elated. It had long been thought that the film rights for the alien race were exclusively owned by Fox, due to the group's synonymy with the Fantastic Four comics, whose onscreen rights were also owned by the company.
However, much how the situation regarding Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch allowed those characters to appear in Avengers: Age of Ultron (they've been X-Men and Avengers over the years), it turned out that Marvel could've used the Skrulls whenever they wanted. According to James Gunn, it was only the use of specific FF-related Skrulls that Marvel couldn't use - such as the Super Skrull - and not the entire alien group itself.
Of course, the whole Marvel rights snafu has been (mostly) made redundant now that Disney have acquired Fox. Spider-Man is rented out to them by Sony, who maintain control over the character's supporting cast, but for the most part, all of Marvel's characters are together where they should be.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
