Earth-25787

Earth-25787 is a universe of films and television programs, that take place within the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). It consists of characters originating from Marvel Comics, such as Spider-Man, the X-Men and the Avengers.

History
In the early 2000's, Marvel Comics was experiencing major financial troubles. They decided to license out the rights to some of their characters, to film studios, in order to create films based on those characters. Whilst many believed that Spider-Man would be sold immediately due to his enormous popularity, it was the X-Men who were first bought out, by Sony. Sony began developing their own X-Men film in 2001, with a 2003 release date.

In 2002, Kevin Feige (who was associate producer on the X-Men film), pitched an idea to Marvel, to have the Avengers characters appear in films, branching from their own solo projects, to a team-up movie. Marvel (who were already impressed with his work in the X-Men), loved the idea, and started asking for film studios to collaborate. They asked Sony, but they said that in terms of comic book projects, they just wanted to focus on the X-Men. The first big film studio that agreed to join the project, was Universal Studios. They immediately began planning their first film, Iron Man, to be released in 2004. They were, however, hesitant to follow through with the project, as they didn't want to dedicate so much time and effort, if people weren't going to enjoy the product. Fortunately enough, Iron Man received amazing responses, and scored quite high at the box office. Due to this, Marvel and Universal went full force with their other planned films. Sony (who's X-Men film was also very positively received), also put a lot more effort into their other X-Men films.

Throughout the first phase of the universe, it becomes clear that the Avengers films are connected with the X-Men films through references to events occurring in each film. This was another idea pitched by Kevin Feige as a way to make the films seem more connected, and as part of a larger universe, also with the hope of a potential crossover film one day.

Phase One

 * 1) X-Men (2003)
 * 2) Iron Man (2004)
 * 3) Hulk (2005)
 * 4) Captain America (2005)
 * 5) X-Men 2 (2006)
 * 6) Thor (2006)
 * 7) The Avengers (2007)