Any major fan of the Marvel universe will instantly tell you that there exists one major flaw with the current plethora of movies based upon Marvel characters: the source material has become split down the middle. While most Marvel characters currently reside in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, FOX continues to maintain a vice grip on plenty of other vital properties. The issue of rights can get a bit muddled when we examine the minutiae, but Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn recently revealed that one very important corner of the Marvel mythos is co-owned by both FOX and Marvel Studios: Skrulls.
The director recently took to Twitter to explain that the wildly popular alien race known as The Skrulls is a property actually co-owned by both Marvel Studios and FOX alike. He stated to a fan:
We've already seen examples of how this sort of thing works; both FOX and Marvel Studios similarly debuted their own respective versions of Quicksilver within one year of each other because the nature of the character allowed him to be co-owned by each studio. The fact that both studios own The Skrulls opens up an interesting situation -- specifically for Marvel. Co-owning The Skrulls means that Marvel Studios has the opportunity to potentially adapt the now iconic Secret Invasion, a major, paranoia-inducing comic book crossover event in which the shape shifting alien race slowly began to invade the Marvel universe. We know that Infinity War is coming, but Secret Invasion could represent an amazing arc to introduce for the Phase 4 films.
However, he also explains that not every aspect both studios own The Skrulls. Fox specifically owns certain characters from the alien race, such as Super-Skrull, and because of that, Marvel would not be able to adapt them unless the two companies manage to strike some sort of Spider-Man-esque deal. This means that any adaptation of major storylines -- Secret Invasion or otherwise -- would require a great deal of tweaking in order to properly work. Considering the positive changes Marvel Studios made to the Civil War story arc in Captain America: Civil War, that's not necessarily a bad thing.
At the end of the day, James Gunn's Tweet only clarifies an issue regarding rights. Although we would love to see The Skrulls show up in any of the cinematic Marvel universes, we still have no concrete confirmation that any such event will even take place. For now we will have to continue hoping and praying that these iconic beings will someday make their way to the silver screen to face off against our favorite superheroes.
