It doesn’t take much for folks to call a movie a disaster these days, reshoots, casting changes, delays, anyone of them can have the internet a blaze with tales of a troubled production from the set. After Rogue One‘s success I had hoped that would quiet everyone down, I really hate when the world collectively jumps to a conclusion but no such luck. That all being said even I am starting to wonder about the upcoming live action adaptation of the ‘Dark Phoenix’ story line that will close out the X-Men: Days of Future Past phase of that universe. It had karma against it from the start, what with X-Men: The Last Stand, which also adopted this comic book story-line, being widely regarded as the lowest point in the franchise. Then there was the less then epic reception of X-Men: Apocalypse which was the film they hoped would usher in their newly cast versions of Cyclops, Jean Gray, Nightcrawler, etc as new fan favorites, with Sophie Turner’s Jean being the least liked of the group. It wasn’t off to a great start, and it didn’t get better once production started, the ominous cloud of Marvel’s acquisition of Fox hanging over it the shoot was delayed, even once it was completed there had been stories of major re-shoots after a disastrous test screening. Fast forward to this week, the news of a trailer blazes through the interwebs and hits to…umm, not terrible fan reception? Hey, at least it will get out there and who knows, maybe it could surprise us.
Well, today brings the news that the film has been delayed again which is especially odd considering the timing literal days after the premier trailer hits. Fox has announced that Dark Phoenix has been moved from February 14th, 2019 to June 7th, 2019, but lets read between the lines her. I opened this by decrying those that jump to conclusions and maybe that’s just what I’m doing. Fox is also moving it’s ‘Alita’ adaptation from a December slot to the one previously occupied by ‘Phoenix’ which may be the real indicator. One of the main reasons a film is moved is to avoid competition if the studio doesn’t have confidence in the flick’s ability to perform. What this says to me is that Fox has no hope that Atila can compete in the highly coveted late December arena so it’s moving to February to give it a fighting chance, more interesting is that the new X-Men flick has been moved right into the trenches of summer box office warfare. So, obviously, they think it can stand up in Marvel’s domain…is it possible this is actually good news for Dark Phoenix? I guess we’ll have to wait until June to find out.
