2018 was supposed to break the record of putting out the most number of Superhero movies as it was going to bring out 8 movies in the Superhero genre. This was supposed to be the biggest year for Marvel projects as we had 7 Marvel related Superhero movies coming out this year.
But now, Fox has pulled something out of their bags which no one can understand and reduced the number of Superhero movies coming this year to 6. Yes, not just New Mutants, X-Men: Dark Phoenix has also been pushed to 2019.
Deadpool 2 is the upcoming X-Men movie which is coming in May is a sequel to hit debut movie on Deadpool. It is directed by David Leitch after Tim Miller left the project due to creative disagreements with the studio. The entire team is coming back from Deadpool to Copycat; Blind-Al to Dopinder, Collossus to Negasonic Teenage Warhead and along with them Cable is thrown into the mix.
He is a time travelling son of Scott Summers aka Cyclops and Madelyne Prior who was trained to become a warrior. There will also be X-Force team up led by Deadpool. It seems that this one might just break the box office record of Deadpool and become the new highest grossing R-rated movie and most profitable X-Men movie of all times.
X-Men: Dark Phoenix is an adaptation of an iconic comic book storyline ‘Dark Phoenix’ written by Chris Claremont and John Byrne. It tells the story of Jean Grey who merges with the dark Phoenix force and become extremely dangerous cosmic creature who threatens to destroy everything.
The movie is directed by Simon Kinberg and Jean Grey is played by Sophie Turner. She turned against her own fellow mutants and commit atrocities by the millions. It is confirmed that we will lose major mutant (s) as her powers are uncontrollable and limitless. Fans believe it could be Magneto as he will first support her only to realize later what a grave mistake he has made.
New Mutants is another X-Men movie which is going to be released in 2019. It is a very different take on mutants universe as it is described to be a straight up horror flick. The film has several villains and one of them is Demon Bear. The director is Josh Boone who is planning a “New Mutants” trilogy in the future. The horror elements are going to be distinct and never seen before by X-Men fans. This is a unique effort to explore horror genre through comic book movies and drawing from big events from comics.
With the beginning of this year, Fox made some adjustments to their upcoming X-Men movie schedule as earlier they had 3 Marvel movies coming out this year, the New Mutants movie which was supposed to release on April 13, Deadpool 2 which was coming out on June 1 and X-Men: Dark Phoenix which was coming out on November 2. Then Fox did something which did not make a lot of sense.
They altered their upcoming schedule as they pulled ‘Deadpool 2’ back 2 weeks and brought the release date to May 18. It was really interesting to see that as Fox landed the movie within the crosshairs of two big Disney projects, Avengers: Infinity War and Solo: A Star Wars Story.
Luckily for Deadpool 2, Disney and Marvel also pulled Infinity War back a week, so Deadpool 2 is now 3 weeks away from Infinity War, but it will still face a tough competition with it, and a week later it is going to get even tougher as ‘Solo’ will also come out. But, it is really good for the fans as they are getting the most anticipated projects of the year within a very short span of time.
Another unnecessary move that Fox made was delaying New Mutants as they pushed the release date for the movie to more than 10 months. New Mutants got its new release date on February 22, 2019. This move is what made us think that Fox has gone crazy. Not just this, they got the rating of the movie down to PG 13 from a solid R. Fox has been doing really well with their R-Rated movies but they got the ratings down here for unexplained reasons.
Amidst all this, Gambit lost its director yet again, and the release date which it had for February 14 next year was pushed to sometime in June due to the shift in the release date of New Mutants. And now, things have become even more bizarre for X-Men fans as X-Men: Dark Phoenix has also got the same treatment for no reason. Yes, Dark Phoenix has also been pushed to next year, and now Dark Phoenix will come out on February 14, 2019.
This again is something that we don’t understand as Dark Phoenix was totally away from harm’s way as it was away from all big releases and did not have to face competition from any big movie. Even Aquaman was more than a month away.
And now, the release date has been pushed to just 3 weeks before Captain Marvel which is coming out on March 6, 2019. What is not clear is that how Fox is going to market the movie, and what is even crazier is that we are going to see two totally different movies from different Universes portray version of the ‘Skrulls’ as both Dark Phoenix and Captain Marvel have Skrulls involved in the movie.
Well, the reason for this delay given by the studios is that the film has to go through significant reshoots. So they will probably be looking to change the plot and the narrative of the movie in a major way. Hopefully, we don’t even get to see the skrulls here so that there are not two versions of these shape-shifting aliens confusing the audiences. But it will be tough to predict what changes may be going on in the movie.
This push in the release date has caused the release date for New Mutants to be pushed even further and now the movie is going to come out on August 2 of 2019, which is another 6-month delay. It is totally insane, and by this time, you should not even ask for the Gambit movie because no one certainly has any clue about it.
Who Knows, the acquisition of Fox by Disney may be completed by then, and the first thing Disney may do is remove New Mutants from existence! We may not even get to see it at all. By then Disney is going to launch its own streaming service, so things look pretty shaky for New Mutants to even come out.
Who knows what is going to happen. Fox is currently taking things as if everything is normal and work is regular to keep a back-up in case the merger between Disney and Fox does not happen. But, they are reaching WB and DC levels of delays and adding movies into development which may not even be made ever.
Fox has more than 8 Marvel superhero movies under development and no one has a clue as to what will happen in the future. For now, let’s just hope everything goes fine with Deadpool 2 and X-Men: Dark Phoenix does not get delayed any further. Here are the official synopsis for the X-Men movies to be released in 2018 and 2019:
Deadpool 2:
“After surviving a near fatal bovine attack, a disfigured cafeteria chef (Wade Wilson) struggles to fulfill his dream of becoming Mayberry’s hottest bartender while also learning to cope with his lost sense of taste. Searching to regain his spice for life, as well as a flux capacitor, Wade must battle ninjas, the yakuza, and a pack of sexually aggressive canines, as he journeys around the world to discover the importance of family, friendship, and flavor – finding a new taste for adventure and earning the coveted coffee mug title of World’s Best Lover”.
X-Men: Dark Phoenix:
“Mystique, Beast, Storm, Nightcrawler and the rest of the X-Men spring into action when a malevolent, power-hungry force threatens to overtake Jean Grey’s mind”.
The New Mutants:
“Magik, Wolfsbane and other teenage mutants try to come to grips with their superpowers while staying at a secret facility”.
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