X-Men Film Franchise

The thing is, Deadpool appears to be an X-Men spin-off. It doesn't retain the rights. In fact, there was a time when another film company had the rights to Deadpool and Venom before they both reverted to the companies that bought their parent properties. (I think this company was Artisan Entertainment, who were behind The Blair Witch Project, but I'd have to look through my notes on this again to be sure.) But since those are spin-offs, they're not contractually-obligated to use those characters unless their movie needs it. Fox was in no rush to make another movie with Deadpool in it, so they wouldn't be at risk of losing the character if they didn't make a spin-off. Just like how they aren't losing the rights to Gambit as a character because they haven't used him since 2009. (And unless they stick him into one of the other movies that they're making, they won't need to use him again; the Gambit movie looks like it's dead in the water at this stage.)

Technically, we don't know because the details of the contracts aren't public beyond a couple of facts (Fox has to pay Marvel a percentage, Fox has to put out a new movie every 7 or so years to keep the rights, and a couple of other things). But it's mighty fraggin' suspicious that X-Men Origins: Magneto was restructured into X-Men: First Class and rushed out to a release date before the 7 years were up for X-Men: The Last Stand's rights-renewal, don't you think? (I believe that X-Men Origins: Wolverine was explicitly made to retain the rights without having to commit to signing the entire cast back on, but Marvel vetoed this; don't quote me on that, but it seems like that's what happened.)

 

I think the casting decisions have more to do with what the directors and studio want than an actual mandate (Singer loves Magneto, Fox conditioned audiences to pay attention to Wolverine at the expense of other characters, and Jennifer Lawrence basically got a disproportionately large role in the last movie because of the success of The Hunger Games) - and for a time, they were actually thinking of writing Wolverine out of X-Men: Apocalypse entirely. I think it's all a matter of deadlines here, and that's what's important to consider.

I should note that X-Men: First Class was a pretty rushed production, and that's why I mention the deadline being so relevant - they had to do a lot of reshoots late into post-production, and it's a small miracle that they managed to make a movie as good as they did with those constraints in mind. Fant4stic was in a similar position, and they were operating a lot closer to the movie's release date deadline to retain the rights... The less said about the mind-numbing, atrocious final product, the better.

 

So Gambit looks to be done for... But in its place is a fictionalized account of Stan Lee's life!