Although a lot of minor characters got shipped off to studios most people never heard of before (including Blade, Daredevil, Man Thing, Ghost Rider), three key players carved up the lion's share of the film rights. Fox walked away with both X-Men and Fantastic Four.. And Universal nabbed Hulk. After an ill-fated movie in 2003 that involved a fight with a gamma-irradiated poodle, Universal sat on their rights. The thing is, however, that unless they made a movie based on the character within a set number of years, the rights reverted back to Marvel (a fact that explains why The Amazing Spider-Man movies exist at all). After a couple of years, Marvel got the rights to their (literally) biggest hero back and used it to launch the MCU. Although it seemed to wrap up neatly enough, there was a tiny little wrinkle in their plan. Universal might have forfeited the Hulk character rights back to Marvel, but they still retained the distribution rights to any movie they made based on him.