10 Reasons Why An Avengers Movie Crossover With X-Men And Spider-Man Won't Be Happening

4. Far Less Ambitious Crossovers Had Almost Insurmountable Problems

In the past, commentators have pointed at movies like Freddy vs. Jason and Who Framed Roger Rabbit as examples of when movie franchises crossed over. If those happened, why can't a Marvel crossover movie happen? In the case of Freddy vs. Jason, the franchises had nowhere to go but up. The Nightmare on Elm Street franchise bottomed out in 1994 with New Nightmare, which only made $19.7 million worldwide. Friday the 13th did even worse, with 2002's Jason X making only $17 million worldwide. But 2003's Freddy vs. Jason ended up grossing $114.9 million worldwide for New Line Cinema, more than three times the prior Freddy and Jason movies made combined. So things definitely worked for the studio there. However, what you're forgetting is that New Line purchased the rights to Friday the 13th in 1989 in order to make the crossover. Despite owning both franchises, it still took more than a dozen years to get the project going because of disagreements over the script and between producers. Attempts to make a sequel with Ash from the Evil Dead series never came to fruition, likely because of similar issues. If it took New Line over a dozen years to make a crossover movie between two nearly dead franchises, two or three studios aren't likely going to make the same gamble with their still healthy multi-billion dollar franchises. While Who Framed Roger Rabbit featured cameos of cartoon characters from rival cartoon studios Disney and Warner Bros., Warner Bros. refused to allow its two most famous characters, Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, in the movie unless they received equal screen time with Disney's biggest stars, Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, and were not portrayed as inferior to their counterparts. This is why these respective characters are always on screen together in the movie. On top of that, Hollywood heavyweight Steven Spielberg had to do the negotiating himself to pull it off. These scenes in question amount to less than four minutes of screentime. Imagine studios trying to strike similar deals for a movie that last two hours featuring dozens of characters. Not even Spielberg has that pull!