That X-MEN/FANTASTIC FOUR Crossover Film May Not Happen After All

Movie Fantastic Four X-Men about 10 years agoby Ben Pearson

Just a couple of weeks ago, director Bryan Singer spoke about a possible crossover movie that would feature the X-Men and the new big screen incarnation of the Fantastic Four, saying that they'd have to wait and see how his upcoming X-Men: Apocalypse and FF did at the box office before moving forward, but:

“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.”

So the studio was apparently working on an idea that would have seen the two teams come together, and that "time" factor definitely would have had to come into play because Fantastic Four takes place in modern day and Apocalypse takes place in the 1980s.

Now producers Simon Kinberg and Hutch Parker have told The New York Daily News that a crossover doesn't seem likely because they aren't even in the same cinematic universe:

They exist in parallel universes. The Fantastic 4 live in a world without mutants. And the X-Men live in a world without the Fantastic 4. Crossing them over would be challenging, but we sure would love to see all those actors together, the way we had them on stage at [San Diego] Comic Con.

Look, the parallel universe thing would be easy enough to work around since Reed Richards and his team invented interdimensional travel in Fantastic Four. It's not that much of a stretch (sorry about the Mr. Fantastic pun) that they'd be able to hone in on a parallel universe and team up with the X-Men to face off against some world-threatening evil. The bigger stretch, it seems, would be to include characters from a movie that most people really don't like (FF) alongside ones people tend to enjoy (X-Men). Why run the risk of polluting the X-Men brand by association when that's doing just fine on its own?

There's still time for all of this to be worked out, and we don't know exactly what Fox's plan is going to be moving forward. I suspect they'll take a look and assess the entire situation after Apocalypse comes out next year, but until then, fans are left to wonder and speculate amongst ourselves. Let us know what you think in the comments.