Remember how Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four blew fans and critics away earlier this year? Oh wait, no. No, it totally, totally didn’t. Disappointing fans, critics, 20th Century Fox, the director himself, and pretty much any man, woman or child who saw it, Fantastic Four was sadly a turkey of ginormous proportions. Well you FF loyalists out there may just have some light at the end of the tunnel…

A new report from Den of Geek claims that the cinematic rights to Marvel’s First Family could actually finally be on their way to Marvel Studios. That means that the FF can then become part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which is clearly the place to be for all Marvel heroes these days. Just ask Spidey, for he’s set to arrive in May’s Captain America: Civil War after Sony agreed a deal with Marvel and Disney to have the Wallcrawler become a part of the MCU.

Where the Fantastic Four are concerned, the story here is that the characters are to be part of a trade between Marvel Studios and 20th Century Fox. It’s believed that Fox are prepared to let Marvel Studios have the cinematic rights to the Fantastic Four in exchange for the television rights to the X-Men.

The notion of an X-Men TV show has been being developed by Fox for the last few months, although talks with Marvel had been an on-going process. Could it now be that the key to sealing the deal was to offer Marvel the cinematic FF in return for the small screen X-Men?

Along with the cinematic Fantastic Four rights also comes names like Silver Surfer, Doctor Doom, The Watcher and Galactus, which would open up some huge possibilities for the MCU if this story does indeed prove true. Hell, there’s even talk that one of Marvel Studios’ mystery 2020 movies could already be pencilled in as a Fantastic Four feature.

Considering how much this year’s Fantastic Four bombed, it’s easy to see why 20th Century Fox would be open to getting rid of the property. In terms of box office, the film only managed to bring in an abysmal $166 million across the globe… which ranks it right up there with the biggest superhero bombs of all time.

Marvel Studios has yet to comment on any of this, but expect more as and when we get it.