Tales of the Parodyverse - It's not good news.

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Subj: It's not good news.
Posted: Sat Sep 25, 2010 at 04:20:50 pm EDT (Viewed 7 times)

Reply Subj: It seems to be a topic that Marvel keeps avoiding...
Posted: Sat Sep 25, 2010 at 02:14:00 pm EDT (Viewed 519 times)

Its such an obvious question among fans, but nobody ever seems to put it to rest in interviews. The best guess is that, as you say, Wanda and Pietro are locked up with the X-Men at Fox. That might not apply to television appearances like this cartoon, but Marvel might not want to confuse a broader audience by using characters that couldn't later be used in an Avengers film.

There also might be the possibility of using them in an Avengers movie after all... Nobody seems to be willing to say for sure.

On another Avengers cartoon tangent, I hate that they've created a Nick Fury that looks nothing like either the classic or the Ultimate version. He's now an eye-patch wearing black man with a full head of hair and a soul patch. What's the point of that?

In a conversation a while back with a senior executive at Marvel I was told that the movie and animated rights to ALL mutant characters who were around at the time of the first X-Men movie have been licensed with the X-Franchise, and the deal is that they stay that way until there's some specified number of years passed without them being used. There was a long actual list naming all the characters, perhaps running to hundreds of names.

Wanda and Pietro are on that list, which makes their appearance in the Avengers movies and cartoons that much less likely. However, the case for Wanda is slightly more optomistic because she was also a cartoon property in the United We Stand series and there may be leeway for arguing the toss. Or a financial deal might be done to license or buy back rights if the Avengers movie goes down well and Whedon wants the Scarlet Witch for a sequel.

One of the reasons Marvel is promoting the Avengers comics line so heavily now relative to the Spidey and X-teams is that the Avengers/heroes line is the one they retain direct movie control over and is therefore their most lucrative potential cash cow. But Wolverine, Spidey, Wanda, Pietro, Firestar, and Justice won't be assembling in any motion picture form without some clever legal work or large cash transfers.

What's NOT clear is whether the Sub-Mariner is on the mutants list. It's suddenly become relevant with rumours of the Invaders appearing in the Captain America movie. Toro was retrospectively revealed to be a mutant too.