Fox Was Apparently Working On Its Own ‘Avengers’ Movie With The X-Men, Fantastic Four, And Others In 2011

The massive Avengers-centric cinematic universe created by Marvel Studios is all the rage right now. Yet while parent company Disney’s recent buyout of 20th Century Fox has guaranteed that certain licensed titles, like the X-Men and Fantastic Four properties, will soon be popping up in the MCU, the former rival studio once entertained plans for its own massive team-up film. At least, that’s according to X-Men: First Class co-writer Zack Stentz, who admitted as much on Kevin Smith‘s Fatman Beyond podcast.

Back in 2011, Marvel’s Captain America: The First Avenger was in theaters paving the way for 2012’s The Avengers. Fox, meanwhile, had released First Class and was still a few years away from figuring out its Fantastic Four reboot. All the while, Stentz claimed, the studio — which hadn’t made a Deadpool film yet and still owned the rights to Daredevil — was itching for its own tentpole:

“My ex-partner and I, when we were working at Fox and we were working on X-Men: First Class, we did a secret movie for them that, I can’t tell you what the plot was, but I can tell you that it used all of the characters, all of the Marvel characters that Fox had at the time in 2011. It used the X-Men. It used the Fantastic Four. It used Daredevil. It used Deadpool. Daredevil was still at Fox at the time.”

The writers ultimately finished the commissioned script, but the film ultimately never came to be, which is a shame since Jason Bourne director Paul Greengrass was in the running to direct it. “We almost had Paul Greengrass directing it, which would’ve been so cool,” added Stentz. Unfortunately, it never happened because “he had another project to do instead.”