We’re almost positive that at least once a week, Kevin Feige—president of Marvel Studios—wakes up in a cold sweat from a nightmare where Marvel optioned off the rights to most of its best and most popular characters. Relieved that it was only a dream, Feige lays back down to sleep. Seconds later he bolts upright realizing that, oh, yeah, that’s exactly what happened.
Between 1986 and 1996, Marvel sold off most of the rights to its best characters—including Fantastic Four, X-Men, Daredevil, Hulk, Silver Surfer, Iron Man and, uh, Howard the Duck—to try and make a quick buck during a difficult period of lagging comic book sales. The deal was such that a new film had to be made every few years or the rights would revert back to Marvel. So if you’re wondering why we continue to get Fantastic Four movies or why Spider-Man reboots every three years, it’s because Fox and Sony, respectively, don’t want to lose those rights. It’s not written anywhere that the movies have to be any good, just that they need to exist.
So when Marvel brilliantly created their Marvel Cinematic Universe, they were forced to do so without some of their biggest, most iconic franchises. Nine years into this thing, Marvel is just now able to include Spider-Man in the MCU, and even then, it’s only through some sort of crazy deal with Sony whereby Sony still retains the Spider-Man rights.