After Disney’s recent acquisition of Fox, many expected there to be a shake-up with Fox’s Marvel characters such as X-Men, Deadpool, and Fantastic Four but many didn’t see that happening until after they released their current slate of Fox films. With Deadpool 2 and The New Mutants having already wrapped and X-Men: Dark Phoenix being mid-way through production, many expected them to go unaffected by any changes from Disney.
With that said, it looks like that may not exactly be the case. Deadpool 2 looks like it will remain untouched as Fox has moved its release date from June 2018 to May 18th, 2018, giving fans a chance to see it sooner than initially anticipated. The film will now go up against Sony’s Slender Man, Avengers: Infinity War’s third week, and will have to prepare to compete with Solo: A Star Wars Story a week later.
However, the horror superhero film The New Mutants will be delayed almost an entire year, shifting its April 2018 date all the way to February 22nd, 2019. The Hollywood Reporter says sources are saying that this is so there’s no X-Men fatigue in some territories as Deadpool 2 and New Mutants would be playing at the same time in some regions but delaying it a whole year has others speculating the film will be reshooting some material to help the X-Men universe segue into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This is pure speculation on our part but when a movie is so close to completion, delaying it so long just seems like a weird idea if it’s just going to sit on a shelf.
Some would say an October release date would probably fit more for the horror film but X-men: Dark Phoenix releases at the very start of November so it would be a tight squeeze for the film which is already probably going to have to do a lot to get butts in seats given the scary tone, potential R-rating, and lack of X-Men branding on the actual title.
Finally, development hell’s favorite film Gambit will be pushed back for the umpteenth time as the Channing Tatum-led film has lost yet another director. Gore Verbinski exited the project earlier this morning but Fox is still set on making the project come to life. Gambit will now release on June 7th, 2019 as opposed to its previous February 14th, 2019 release date. The film will likely not begin production in March as expected as Fox has to find a new director.
