What The Hell Is Going On With The X-Men Movies?

Deadpool 2 is right around the corner, but it'll be the last X-Men-related movie for a while as both X-Men: Dark Phoenix and The New Mutants have now been pushed back to 2019. In both cases, reshoots are to blame: Dark Phoenix is undergoing relatively minor reshoots to tweak the movie after test screenings, but New Mutants' reshoots are more substantial. Reportedly up to 50% of the movie, which was directed by Josh Boone (The Fault in Our Stars), is being re-filmed in order to make it scarier and add more characters.

Dark Phoenix, which was directed by long-time X-Men screenwriter and producer Simon Kinberg, will be based around Jean Grey's (Sophie Turner) struggle with the Phoenix Force inside her, which we saw her unleash in X-Men: Apocalypse. New Mutants is also about mutants struggling with their superpowers, but will be considerably darker than the main X-Men movies, and set inside a secret facility designed to contain young and volatile mutants. Just as Deadpool was an all-out comedy, and Logan was a grim and gritty Western, New Mutants will have a distinct horror genre bent.

Unfortunately, it will be a while before we actually get to see either of these movies. Dark Phoenix was supposed to release on November 2, 2018, but has been pushed back to February 14, 2019, while New Mutants was originally scheduled for release on April 13, 2018, but is now releasing on August 2, 2019. Given this substantial reshuffle, it's worth taking a look at the recent history of the X-Men franchise, what to expect going forward, and whether or not these delays and reshoots spell trouble.

This Page: The X-Men Plan

The X-Men Plan

Although the Marvel Cinematic Universe has come to be seen as the pinnacle of the superhero movie renaissance, the X-Men movie franchise predates it by eight years, with Bryan Singer's X-Men released in 2000. At the time, therefore, there was no real blueprint for building a cinematic universe, and this is evident in the tangled continuity of the main X-Men movies and their spinoffs. Efforts to fix the timeline with X-Men: Days of Future Past only served to complicate things further, and more recently Twentieth Century Fox seems to have relaxed their concerns about X-Men continuity altogether.

Deadpool, for example, is theoretically set in the same universe as the main X-Men movies, but the first movie openly made fun of the fact that none of the A-list X-Men make an appearance. Logan, meanwhile, is set in the year 2029 and it's still unclear whether it takes place in the main timeline or not. Hugh Jackman said it takes place in a "slightly different universe," while director James Mangold demurred on that point, instead preferring to just say that the movie takes place five years after anything depicted in any of the other movies. The best interpretation of that movie is that it takes place in a possible future, rather than being a fixed point in the timeline.

What all this means, from a practical standpoint, is that the X-Men movie franchise does not have a fixed plan in the same way that the MCU has a fixed plan. The X-Men movies have already been rebooted once, with X-Men: First Class, and recently the focus seems to be shifting away from the main entries like Dark Phoenix, and more towards spin-offs like New Mutants. This is a testament to the success of Deadpool (which was a surprisingly massive box office hit) and Logan (which was also a box office hit, and even picked up an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay). X-Men: Apocalypse's worldwide gross of $543 million, while very respectable, was nonetheless lower than both of Fox's R-rated spinoffs. Somehow, the X-Men side projects have overtaken the traditional "tentpole" blockbusters.

Much like the mutants at the heart of it, evolution is a trademark of the X-Men movie franchise. When The Last Stand was almost universally hated, Fox came back five years later with a soft reboot and a new young cast. When Deadpool was a smash hit, Fox green lit Deadpool 2 and accelerated plans for an X-Force movie. So it only makes sense that Fox would want to recreate the success of Deadpool and Logan with The New Mutants, embarking on reshoots to make the movie even scarier (with Fox perhaps hoping the new release date will deliver an IT-style late-summer horror hit).

So, do these delays and reshoots spell trouble for Dark Phoenix and New Mutants, or are they a sensible move by Fox?

What's Going On With Dark Phoenix and New Mutants?

2018 was meant to be a busy year for the X-Men franchise, with three movies releasing: The New Mutants in April, Deadpool 2 in May, and X-Men: Dark Phoenix in November. The first teaser trailer for New Mutants was released in October 2017, and it was a great teaser. It employed the now-clichÃ©d (but nonetheless effective) strategy of using a slowed-down cover version of a popular song ("Another Brick in the Wall" by Pink Floyd), and it promised something very different to anything else seen in the X-Men movie franchise so far - a full-blown horror movie.

Given the positive response to that teaser, the report of heavy reshoots to make the movie scarier is reminiscent of Warner Bros.' DC villain team-up, Suicide Squad, which was (somewhat notoriously) reshot and re-cut to lean into the tone of the very first teaser trailer, which was shown at Comic-Con in 2015. In a report on that movie's troubled production process, THR said that "A key concern for Warners executives was that Suicide Squad didn't deliver on the fun, edgy tone promised in the strong teaser trailer for the film." The studio began working on a new edit, and even brought in the production company that had cut the trailer to help rework the movie.

Suicide Squad, along with 2015's Fantastic Four and last year's Justice League, is one of several recent comic book movies that have given fans a reason to dread the word "reshoots." All three movies underwent heavy reshoots (in the case of the latter two, with new directors) in order to get them to where the studios thought they needed to be. Fantastic Four fared the worst - hated by fans and critics alike, and bombing at the box office. Justice League underwhelmed so much that it triggered a "Release the Snyder Cut" campaign from fans who wanted to see original director Zack Snyder's version, rather than the Frankenstein's monster that was parts of Snyder's movie and Joss Whedon's reshoots welded together. And Suicide Squad, though it was enjoyed by some and performed well at the box office, was ripped apart in reviews.

So, does the news of both Dark Phoenix and New Mutants undergoing reshoots spell certain doom for those movies? In short, no. Despite the high-profile horror stories, additional photography is a standard part of any big-budget studio movie, and further reshoots in the wake of test screenings are also common. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story notably underwent heavy reshoots, as did zombie action film World War Z, and Mad Max: Fury Road scheduled three weeks of reshoots almost a year after the original shoot wrapped. New Mutants and Dark Phoenix could turn out like Justice League and Suicide Squad, or they could turn out like Rogue One and Fury Road. The fact that reshoots are taking place tells us very little.

What this does mean, however, is that the future landscape of the X-Men movie franchise has changed. Instead of Fox releasing three X-Men-related movies this year, they're now releasing just one, and there could be more changes down the line.

What's Next For the X-Men Movies?

Deadpool and the X-Force team prepare to jump out of a plane in Deadpool 2

It was reported in February that Fox planned to release three X-Men movies in both 2019 and 2020, so we now know for sure what two of those 2019 movies will be. The third, theoretically, will be Gambit, which is set to star Channing Tatum in the title role, but its planned March 2018 filming start date was put on hold indefinitely after Gore Verbinski became the latest director to quit the project. Shortly after Verbinski's departure, Gambit was given a planned release date of June 7, 2019, but there's been no further news on the movie and unless Fox finds a new director soon, another release date change seems inevitable.

Beyond Gambit, Fox has plenty of other X-Men-related movies in development. Next up is X-Force, which will reportedly begin filming in October 2018, with Drew Goddard (The Cabin in the Woods) writing and directing. The latest trailer for Deadpool 2 confirmed that X-Force will make their first appearance in that movie, and introduced the team, so X-Force seems like Fox's next safe bet. Beyond that, there are five other Marvel Comics-based movies in development at Fox, that we know of: a Kitty Pryde film, from Deadpool director Tim Miller; a Multiple Man movie starring James Franco; a Logan spin-off movie about X-23; a Doctor Doom solo movie directed by Legion showrunner Noah Hawley; and a Silver Surfer movie, which is being written by Brian K. Vaughan.

Of course, that's not the only thing on the horizon for Fox. Also looming - and potentially threatening to throw a wrench into all of these works - is a deal that would see The Walt Disney Company acquire 21st Century Fox, and therefore bring all of Fox's Marvel properties under the same umbrella as the MCU. This deal is currently under review by the United States Department of Justice Antitrust Division, which last year sued to block AT&T's proposed acquisition of Time Warner Inc., and even if the Justice Department gives its approval the acquisition is not expected to close for 12 to 18 months.

What all that means is that any fixed plans to alter the course of the X-Men franchise in order to merge with the MCU would be premature at this point, so don't expect to see crossover post-credits scenes just yet. However, the fact that the franchise's future is uncertain right now means that upcoming X-Men movies are likely to be more self-contained stories (like Logan) or mini-franchises (like Deadpool and X-Force), rather than efforts to connect everything together into one cohesive cinematic universe. After all, within the next year or so Disney could be at the wheel.

More: All 13 X-Men Films Fox Still Has In Development