Marvel sold film rights to different superheroes before developing their own film studio. Seeing how each property has become a franchise, there’s no way that the other studios would let the rights revert back or willingly give them back. But that doesn’t mean they’ll refuse to work together.

For The Avengers they were going to display the Oscorp Tower, which is featured in Sony’s The Amazing Spider-Man. Unfortunately it didn’t pan out because of time constraints.

Lauren Shuler Donner, producer of all the X-Men flicks, had an interview with Crave Online and shared her thoughts on a possible crossover with The Avengers:

“I would love it. I would love it. I personally have close ties to Marvel because of Kevin Feige, because Kevin worked for me. But to take our characters and mingle them in the way that they were written, yeah, absolutely.”

The chances for a crossover for the two franchises — and with two essentially rival studios — are slim, but having a producer warmed up to the idea is a small step in a direction a lot of Marvel fans like. And yes, that includes me. It’s evident that no studio wants to relinquish their film rights to characters, but to work together would garner droves of people; and draw in massive amounts of money.