I mean, knowing what we know now with the internet having all this information easier to access, we found out that at the time, he wanted Sony, Fox, and Universal to play nice and share their characters (which definitely wasn't going to happen). Even in IM, they held on to that deleted scene for years until they finally got a chance to leak it out after the Fox acquisition. At the time it wasn't a possibility, seems like he still didn't let go of the idea and he was holding out hope that one day it would be possible to have all of the characters. The gamble worked out, and he got his ultimate wish. Now, we're in the middle of that transition where the pool of characters are widened because the legal stuff has cleared up, and we can officially see them use the characters he's always wanted. I've just been seeing a common theme from him over the years always wanting a shared universe with X-men being what he really wanted to get to. In this case, he had to start a bit left of center to get there, but he lucked up and here we are. Seems like he was banking on Fox eventually messing up because they were messing up a lot of aspects of the mutants despite them being profitable.
