Ever since it was announced that 20th Century Fox was planning to bring the Fantastic Four back to the big screen, there has been persistent rumor and speculation about the possibility that they could possibly one day crossover with the live-action versions of the X-Men. Unfortunately, people like writer/producer Simon Kinberg have done their part to shut down that kind of talk - but now Bryan Singer has openly admitted that a superhero meet-up could wind up being in play in coming years.
Yahoo! is reporting these new statements from the filmmaker, who was speaking to the site while out promoting the recently released X-Men: Days of Future Past - Rogue Cut Blu-ray. Singer was asked about the possibility of seeing Marvel's mutant heroes and First Family meet on screen someday, and he explained,
Those ideas are in play. That would be a natural match-up because they’re both ensemble films and there is a natural mechanism by which to do it... It deals with time. That’s all I’m going to say.
Simon Kinberg has gone on record saying that the version of the Fantastic Four that will be featured in Josh Trank's upcoming film definitely don't live in the same universe as the X-Men... but as Bryan Singer notes, that's not an incredibly hard hurdle to get over. While I'm not entirely sure what he means by time (perhaps parallel timelines?), the strongest theory about the crossover comes from the fact that the Fantastic Four movie will be all about inter-dimensional travel and exploring worlds beyond time and space. Knowing this, it's not hard to imagine the Fantastic Four stepping into a machine and stepping out the other side in a world where Professor Xavier and his team have been around for decades.
While Bryan Singer has admitted that "the ideas are in play," it's worth noting that the studio is apparently not yet willing to commit to that future just yet. Instead, the director insists that things with the comic book franchises are being played conservatively, saying,
We’ll have to see how the films turn out. To just say you’re going to do it would be a mistake, you have to see how the films evolve before you make that decision to completely commit to that.
This is a pretty wishy-washy statement, but the truth of the matter is that we don't have much more time to wait before the future becomes a whole lot clearer. Josh Trank's Fantastic Four will be arriving in theaters on August 7th, and if it's a hit with critics and audiences we can probably assume that a crossover with the X-Men will be scheduled. If it's a total disaster and a bomb and the box office, Fox may just wind up forgetting that it was ever made and just move forward with the X-Men franchise as planned.
