Recently it was announced that the upcoming film The New Mutants will be delayed by ten months. Could this have something to do with the recent Fox deal, and in particular, could this imply that New Mutants will tie into the Marvel Cinematic Universe somehow?
Though X-Men is made by Marvel Comics, which is now owned by Disney, its movie rights were owned by Fox, which has made numerous films in the franchise since 2000. However, last December saw Disney buy nearly all of Fox’s properties, including the rights to X-Men, with word that the Merry Mutants will indeed be folded into the MCU at some point. This has led to a lot of confusion about the films that were already in production, which also include Deadpool 2 and X-Men: Dark Phoenix.
New Mutants was expected to come out on April 13, with marketing already picking up to promote it; as such, this sudden change to a February 22, 2019 release is quite odd. Rumor is that while the test screenings have gone well, the studio wants to play up the film’s horror elements more, which fits with the recent pattern of X-Men movies being genre mashups to prevent superhero fatigue. It is also possible that they chose an extra long delay to avoid putting the relatively small-scale film against summer blockbusters.
However, others note that ten months give the studio time to make some very big changes. While all just speculation, some wonder if perhaps adjustments are being made for Disney’s plans. (For comparison, Deadpool 2 has recently moved its release date two weeks earlier, which many see as benefiting Disney’s Solo: A Star Wars Story.)
Of course, at this point things are all speculation. It should be noted that the deal will not completely go through for another two years or so, and that if the studios are going to try and merge their franchises now, New Mutants is probably not the best vehicle to do it, being a new sub-series with relatively unknown characters. After all, it is Wolverine and Professor X that we want to see meet the Avengers, not Magik or Cannonball.
Unfortunately for fans, we may now have to wait more than a year to find out what is really happening.
