UPDATE: Variety has evidently gotten an answer as to why Sony would include a clip from a Fox film in one of their movies. Apparently, shortly after the release of (500) Days of Summer, director Marc Webb signed a contract with Fox Searchlight to make another movie. Obviously that didn't happen because Webb ended up signing a deal to working on the Amazing Spider-Man movies. As a way to get out of the contract, Sony made a deal with Fox to allow them to show an exclusive clip from X-Men: Days of Future Past after the credits of The Amazing Spider-Man 2. It's as simple as that!
The unchanged original story is below:
Much has been hypothesized about the rivalry between Marvel Studios and Fox (home of the X-Men and Fantastic Four) and Sony (home to Spider-Man), but not much has been said about the relationship just between Fox and Sony regarding their respective Marvel characters. It's possible that this is because Fox and Sony don't have an eye on each other's properties, leaving their comic book movies unspoiled by animosity. Now a new development has arisen, however, and suggests that the studios may not just be neutral towards each other, but possibly even BFFs.
According to Empire, Sony is lending out the post-credits space in the upcomingThe Amazing Spider-Man 2 to the Fox and the folks behind X-Men: Days Of Future Past. According to the source, the clip will be an action sequence from the new X-Men movie and will feature a couple of X-characters and an attack on a young General William Stryker. The mutants in question will be Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), Havok (Lucas Till) and Toad (Evan Jonigkeit). Wait a second... so Havok is now chummy with Mystique and Toad? Are they all in the Brotherhood Of Mutants? Is Havok now a villain? Or are the lines separating these characters a bit more complicated than good and bad? Fingers crossed for that!
Before you get your hopes up, the scene has no bearing on the events in the Spider-Man universe, so it's really just one studio giving a hand to the other one. Of course, this does opens up a conversation about the possibility of Fox and Sony being amenable to mixing their universes together. Surely Spidey would give a massive boost to The Fantastic Four, and wouldn't it be great if Spidey was struggling with Doc Ock and had to call in a favor from Colossus and Nightcrawler? Let's not forget that Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man actually shows up on the blooper reel from the first X-Men movie:
But for now, this is totally a "what-if" situation - even if people keep trying to make it happen. A lot of paperwork has to occur before you can imagine these characters hanging out on the big screen. There are also a lot of questions: if Spider-Man were in the X-Men reality, would he be classified as a mutant and hunted down like the members of Xavier's School? The questions about "where's Iron Man?" are bad enough during Captain America. What if we have to deal with fans asking why Spidey doesn't go to fellow New York City residents The Fantastic Four when Venom is waging war on the citizens? The tradeoff for a moment when these characters fight side by side is the ultimate confusion and ridiculousness of a universe crowded with costumed counterparts who only seem to team up at strategic moments. So, kind of like Marvel comics.
Oh, wait. That actually makes a lot of sense. Make it happen, Fox and Sony.
