All The Fox Film Franchises Disney Now Owns

Oh yeah, then there's this one. From the way the Fox deal has been reported in some quarters, you'd be forgiven for thinking Disney were literally buying nothing but the X-Men franchise. Of course, the excitement is hard to deny as, hand in hand with the Fantastic Four, the mutant series represents the last major absentees from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

We've already discussed some of the potential drawbacks to the X-Men being incorporated into the MCU, not least the fact that, all in all, the X-movies are faring pretty well on their own, particularly with the huge critical and commercial success of Deadpool and Logan. In some respects, it's hard to imagine how Marvel will deal with the significant world-building the X-Men movies have already done independent of the MCU.

Still, as we mentioned earlier, Disney have stressed they will not try to steer the fledgling Deadpool series off its resolutely R-rated course, so fans can breathe easy there at least; and it has already been widely speculated that the upcoming X-Men: Dark Phoenix will represent a fresh start of sorts for the flagship series.

As for whether the MCU has room for the X-Men: look at it this way. The upcoming Avengers: Infinity War is set to be a major game-changer for the franchise, and once we reach the end credits of the as-yet untitled fourth Avengers movie due 2019, it's very likely that a good number of the existing Marvel superheroes will make their final bow.

With that in mind, it's fair to assume that will leave plenty of space for the X-Men to fill out the MCU from 2020 onwards, and we're excited to see how Marvel go about making that happen.