As I was telling someone how Hugh Jackman would have loved to do another movie as Wolverine teaming up with the Avengers they exclaimed: “But Wolverine isn’t Marvel!” This set me off drawing up a map of the different film property rights when it comes to Marvel.

» Jump straight to the infographic.

Because let’s get one thing straight: Wolverine and X-men have always been a part of Marvel comics, and I was reading those comics long before any films with the characters came out. In the comics Wolverine was a member of the Avengers team, operating both with the main Avengers and later New Avengers. That means his friends included Captain America, Iron Man, Spider-man, Spider-woman, Luke Cage, Ronin, and the Sentry. According to Screenrant he has appeared on at least 13 different Avengers teams.

The source of confusion is when Marvel was having financial difficulties in the 1990s and decided to start selling film rights to the various characters in the Marvel universe. Well, 20th Century Fox happened to buy X-men and to the dismay of all Marvel fans this means a lot of the characters who hang out in the comic books don’t get to hang out on the big screen.

Here is a cursory overview, including the top superhero names, of who owns the rights to what character. The infographic will give you some insight into the complexity of all this, including the fact that character right and distribution right can be owned by different companies.

Hopefully sometime in the not too distant future the characters will find their way home to Marvel… erhm I mean Disney.

Infographic by Per Axbom: The crazy world of Marvel superhero film rights. Arrows show how Marvel sold film rights in the 1990s to New Line Cinema (Blade), Artisan Entertainment and Lions Gate (Punisher), Sony Pictures (Spider-Man), 20th Century Fox (Fantastic Four, X-Men, Deadpool, Daredevil), Universal (Hulk) and Paramount, and how Disney acquired Marvel in 2009. At the bottom, DC: "Nothing to see here. Warner Bros owns it all", and Wonder Woman saying "Those Marvel people have made such a mess of their property. I guess you need to throw a tiara to get your ducks in a row."

[Nerd alert! Yes, I grew up reading superhero comics and I treat the characters as my friends, hence defending them when I feel they have been wronged.]