X-Men: Dark Phoenix and The New Mutants, two upcoming mutant-stuffed Marvel movies from 20th Century Fox, have been delayed. When they were first announced, both of these movies were lined up for 2018. Now, though, Dark Phoenix has been pushed to February 14th 2019 and The New Mutants has been shifted to a release date of August 19th 2019.
Why the delays, you ask? Well, the internet scuttlebutt points towards reshoots.
ComicBook reports that Dark Phoenix, the next movie in the main X-Men series, has been pushed back because the studio has “elected to bring the film back into production” after some test screenings. However, Jean Grey actress Sophie Turner is currently busy shooting the final season of Game Of Thrones. Fox will have to wait in line to get some set time with her – hence the delay.
Collider corroborates the story that “scheduling issues” with reshoots is causing the hold up with Dark Phoenix, although it doesn’t point the finger quite so squarely at Turner. (It can’t be easy to book in surprise set of reshoots with Jessica Chastain, Jennifer Lawrence or Michael Fassbender, either.)
As for The New Mutants, which has Turner’s Thrones BFF Maisie Williams in its cast, Collider reports that the film “is not ‘scary’ enough”, despite testing well at early screenings. Given that The New Mutants has been touted as the first X-Men horror movie, you can see why Fox might want to conduct some reshoots and make sure there are enough scary scenes to warrant the hype.
Collider states, somewhat worryingly, that “at least 50% of the movie may be reshot, and they’re adding one or two new characters who will be present throughout the entirety of the film”. Yikes, that’s a lot of work.
Of course, these explanations of the delays have all come from the press, rather than official announcements. As ever, it’s hard to tell the speculation from the cold hard facts, especially when the casts and crews of these projects are keeping quiet. Neither Dark Phoenix director Simon Kinberg nor The New Mutants director Josh Boone has commented on the delays as of yet.
As more news from these projects comes to light, we’ll let you know.