Ahead of time, only three new titles were announced to be landing on Disney Plus today. Namely, the latest episode of National Geographic’s Shark Attack Files, the season finale of Star Wars: The Bad Batch, and 2006 fantasy film Aquamarine.
However, without any fanfare, the Mouse House’s streaming service has actually just secretly added two classic Marvel movies back to its library this Friday morning.
Unlike other streamers such as Netflix and HBO Max, Disney declines to reveal which titles are being removed beforehand, so it always comes as a surprise to subscribers when a certain film suddenly goes missing. Case in point, 2000’s X-Men vanished from D+ in early January, with 2005’s Fantastic Four following suit a few weeks later at the beginning of this month. However, the good news is that both Fox efforts have now returned to the site.
These two films hopped over to Peacock once they were taken down from Disney Plus, presumably due to some pre-existing licensing agreement arranged by Fox. Interestingly, both titles remain on Peacock at the time of writing, so it looks like they’ll be available on both platforms for the time being. But Marvel fans will mostly be pleased that the original X-Men and Fantastic Four flicks are back home alongside nearly every other Marvel movie ever made.
X-Men kicked off Fox’s X-universe, which ended up spanning two decades before Disney swept in and snapped up the rights to the mutant race. Meanwhile, ’05’s Fantastic Four was the original cinematic outing for the First Family, later followed by its 2007 sequel and the 2015 remake. Marvel Studios is currently developing another reboot from Spider-Man director Jon Watts. The X-Men are likewise on their way to the MCU eventually.
You can now stream X-Men and Fantastic Four on Disney Plus.