Fox’s ‘X-Men’ Franchise at an End; Don’t Expect MCU Versions For a While
It’s about as official as it can get without Disney saying anything: the X-Men franchise, as it was under Fox, is effectively over. All that’s left are for them to distribute the last two movies in their series – Dark Phoenix and The New Mutants – and the reins will be handed over to Marvel Studios, who will reboot them in a few years.
With the completion of the Disney-Fox deal, creative control of the various Marvel intellectual properties that they had the licenses to use – including X-Men, Fantastic Four, Silver Surfer, Doctor Doom, X-Force, Deadpool, The New Mutants, Wolverine, and potentially several others with the library of characters explicitly related to those franchises – shift over to Marvel Studios. That effectively means that the likes of Simon Kinberg and Lauren Shuler Donner will no longer serve as the creative leads handling the franchise, but creative control will instead fall to Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige and his team of producers. On the subject of Kinberg and Donner, The Hollywood Reporter explained that Donner has a production deal to be credited on every single X-Men movie, and Kinberg likely has something similar. Either those deals will be reworked, or they’ll continue to be credited with limited involvement in the new films.
Dark Phoenix, which was initially conceived as the start of a new trilogy, is now set to be the end of the line for the main series of movies. That’s set to hit theaters for sure, but the spin-off The New Mutants might not be so lucky. As previously discussed, Disney and Fox are potentially looking at streaming platforms to put the movie on between Disney+ and Hulu. The latter seems more likely, considering the edgier content of the film being more well-suited for the more adult of the two platforms. A decision will not be made until after Disney execs have viewed the film in its current cut, which is not likely to receive reshoots.
With the end of the franchise, virtually every single character cast in one of Fox’s X-Men movies is getting recast by Marvel themselves, as any contracts the previous actors had with Fox are now effectively null and void. Meanwhile, Ryan Reynolds has solid job security, as the R-rated Deadpool franchise is set to continue with him in the lead role. For now, it’s not clear if that will also apply to his co-stars in his movies, or, for that matter, if his movies will continue to be set in a standalone universe as the first two have been, or if the Merc with the Mouth will join up with the MCU via some kind of convenient excuse in-universe.
So where does that leave Marvel Studios? Anyone hoping that Marvel films a last-minute cameo as a post-credits scene for Avengers: Endgame next month is setting themselves up for disappointment, as the company already have a bunch of movies in the pipeline that will hit before the first X-Men movie could possibly arrive – Spider-Man: Far From Home, Black Widow, The Eternals, Black Panther 2, Doctor Strange 2, Shang-Chi, and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. That’s also not counting a likely Captain Marvel 2 after that movie has been a clear success for Disney, or a third Spider-Man film that’s all but inevitable. THR estimates that 2021 is the absolute earliest that a new movie based on a formerly Fox-licensed Marvel IP could arrive, and that’s only if they fast-track a project and shift an existing release date around. Disney+ content with Fox-licensed characters, conversely, may come sooner.
Feige’s first major involvement in a Marvel movie began towards the beginning, with 2000’s X-Men. He was hired as a production assistant by Donner and Avi Arad, who specifically hired him to help the cast and crew get an understanding of the source material, and was even said to be the one to push to give Wolverine the haircut that he has in the comics. It seems fitting, then, that the student has become the master, as he will finally get an opportunity to bring the kind of franchise-building that he’s been able to implement for the Marvel Ciematic Universe to the X-Men, which are an entire interconnected world of franchises in and of themselves.
Dark Phoenix will be released on June 7, 2019. The New Mutants will be released on August 2, 2019.
Grant Davis is a freelance writer who has covered entertainment news for more than seven years. His articles have frequently appeared in Star Wars News Net as well as as other entertainment-related websites. As someone who grew up on Star Wars and comic book movies, he’s completely thrilled with the current era of genre entertainment.
