This is why we say to be skeptical of everything. Recently I posted a series of rumors about Fox’s New Mutants and X-Men: Dark Phoenix, which as I noted then was by a poster on the SuperheroHype Forums, which made them instantly dubious but worth keeping tabs on, especially with the Fox/Disney deal wrapping up. Turns out those rumors were just that, and both movies have not been canceled.
ScreenRant says don’t believe the hype, and their reasons are sound…mainly because they echo my own. First of all, the supposed inside source at Fox who reported on the various dysfunctions of New Mutants and Dark Phoenix provided no evidence of anything. While there has undoubtedly been trouble with both films, there’s nothing to suggest Fox has pulled them from the schedule. In fact, it looks like Dark Phoenix is going back to Montreal for reshoots next month. Pretty dumb to set reshoots on a movie that isn’t coming out. I would disregard EVERYTHING in those rumors, including the stuff about Gambit, Deadpool 3, beef on the New Mutants set….all of it.
Second, it makes no sense for Fox to cancel both films after investing north of $300M in them. That’s not just bad business, it’s positively Trump-ian in its financial incoherence. Third, there was the suggestion that Disney wanted both films axed now that the X-Men and Fantastic Four will be making their way home to Marvel Studios. That’s just not how things work, though. The Fox/Disney deal won’t finalize until 2019, and both companies MUST proceed forward as if nothing is going on. Disney can’t start meddling with Fox properties in hopes of making things easier for themselves later. And as we’ve seen over the last year of these negotiations, Fox has been launching new franchises left and right without so much as a care about Disney.
So, X-Men: Dark Phoenix is first out of the gate, opening in February 2019 with Simon Kinberg directing. It’s his directorial debut, which I think has a lot of ears perked up for signs of trouble. The delays and a lack of any promo footage is a worrying sign, as well as the general silence about the movie in general. I mean, do we really know what it’s about other than it will be another chance to get the Dark Phoenix storyline right? This is basically the “core” X-Men franchise now, with James McAvoy, Jennifer Lawrence, Michael Fassbender, and more moving the timeline ahead to the 1990s.
New Mutants still looks like an issue to me, but it’s still going to happen. The Josh Boone-directed superhero horror brings to the big screen the X-Men’s youngest charges: Anya Taylor-Joy as Magik, Maisie Williams as Wolfsbane, Charlie Heaton as Cannonball, Henry Zaga as Sunspot, Blu Hunt as Danielle Moonstar, and Alice Braga as Cecilia Reyes with Antonio Banderas as the mysterious villain. An early trailer that showed the team trapped in a haunted psycho ward was met with a tepid response, and reshoots were ordered up that caused the release date to get moved a couple of times. As of now it’s set to open in August 2019.
