Since The Avengers, Marvel Studios has been setting the superhero blockbuster tone and watching all the other studios try to scramble together whatever costumed crusaders they have.  Marvel took the time to build up to Avengers and the company has the character library to move forward at a steady, deliberate pace.  Meanwhile, this week has made it abundantly clear how badly the other studios want an Avengers-like movie and the universe to go with it.  Wonder Woman will now be in the Batman/Superman movie; The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is so eager to lead into the Sinister Six, it's probably showing off its post-credits scene in the first trailer; and X-Men: Days of Future Past is still five months away, but yesterday Bryan Singer was already tweeting about the next movie, X-Men: Apocalypse.  We don't know if these movies will be good, but we know they'll be big.

In an effort to go even bigger, 20th Century Fox has made a deal with X-Men writer Simon Kinberg to create a Marvel-style movie universe for the studio.  Hit the jump for more.

simon-kinberg-elysium

Fox has two major superhero franchises: X-Men and The Fantastic Four.  In addition to writing Days of Future Past, he also wrote X-Men: The Last Stand, and he's doing a rewrite on The Fantastic Four.  According to THR, 20th Century Fox, has signed a three-year first-look deal with Kinberg and his Genre Films production company.  The deal will allow Kinberg to combine the studio's superhero franchises, and give Fox better position in the superhero movie arms race.  Per THR:

"I have a lot of ideas on how to built those brands and do what everybody is thinking of these days: Be like Marvel.  I want to be able to build stories over multiple movies."

If Kinberg has good stories to tell, then more power to him.  There's no word if he'll be writing X-Men: Apocalypse, but it wouldn't be an outlandish assumption.  However, he's also got a very crowded dance card.  Kinberg is co-creating and executive producing the new animated series Star Wars: Rebels, possibly writing a Star Wars spinoff movie, and serving as a producer on Neill Blomkamp's Chappie, Drew Goddard's The Martian, Disney's live-action adaptation of Cinderella, and an Amblin-esque adaptation of the graphic novel Rust.