'The Fantastic Four' Will Join Fox's Marvel Universe on March 6, 2015

Fox has some pretty ambitious plans for its Marvel properties. With the success of Disney's Marvel Cinematic Universe, Fox plans to open expand its own slice of the Marvel universe, bringing the Fantastic Four into the world already established by the X-Men series. With Chronicle director Josh Trank helming The Fantastic Four and comic book guru Mark Millar serving as Fox's Marvel consultant, Fox has targeted March 6, 2015, as the return date for the first family of superheroes.

While the fans would most benefit from Fox and Disney finding a way to bring all of the Marvel superheroes together in the same universe, Fox creating its shared universe isn't a bad second option. With X-Men: Days of Future Past merging Bryan Singer's original X-Men movies with the series started by Matthew Vaughn's X-Men: First Class, Fox is already working to tie everything together. The potential for an X-Men/Fantastic Four clash is an exciting idea. I'm curious to see if any X-Men turn up in The Fantastic Four, especially considering how 2015 will be the year Disney releases The Avengers 2. Wouldn't Fox want to tease what they have in store for fans too?

The Fantastic Four (not to be confused with Fantastic Four, which was Tim Story's childish take on the superhero family, or 1994's The Fantastic Four, which was the never-released movie made to hold onto the film rights) will ignore anything previously done with the series, starting over with new actors, which makes sense seeing as how Chris Evans is kind of tied up playing Captain America in the official Marvel Cinematic Universe.