A MCU Phase 4 is indirectly paying off a lot of those plans. Coming from a bankruptcy filing in 1996, Marvel had to sell film rights to many of its most famous characters. Spider-Man, for example, was acquired by Sony while Fantastic Four, the X-Men, Daredevil, and Elektra were sold to FOX.
That’s why, in the mid-2000s, there were three strands of Marvel movies being produced at the same time: Sony's, FOX's, and Marvel's own. The most successful ones were arguably the Spider-Man and X-Men films, which also benefited from Daredevil are not well ed by audiences, there was at the time a sense of optimism for future sequels and the introduction of new characters between all Marvel movies.
the Netflix Marvel series and is now expected to play a big role in MCU productions. Silver Surfer starred in the second Fantastic Four movie, and the character could be back in the cards as John Watts is working on the MCU reboot of the superhero family.
Even characters who didn't necessarily suffer from canceled projects back then are slowly making their way into the MCU. Starting in 2016, Sony and Marvel worked together on a version of Spider-Man for the MCU, and a second trilogy starring Tom Holland is all but confirmed. The X-Men could make their MCU debut at any time, and Eternals.
Characters like Namor, Fury, and Daredevil being at the center of MCU Phase 4 after scraped movies and sequels in the 2000s makes it so that Marvel history comes full circle. One of the biggest difficulties that the early MCU faced was being completely restricted to the Avengers universe — something that did not stop Marvel Studios from crafting one of the most successful series of films in history. The fact that the franchise wasted no time in starting work on properties like the Fantastic Four and the X-Men shows that the MCU shared the same frustration as its audience, and that Marvel’s future has never looked brighter.
