The New Mutants & Dark Phoenix
Before Fox got snatched up by Disney, they had multiple X-Men movies in the can, but only the horror spinoff New Mutants and the reboot closer Dark Phoenix managed to eke out. Both Mutants and Phoenix were meant to release respectively during the spring and fall of 2018, but Mutants flinched first and was kicked to February 2019 so as to avoid cannibalization at the hands of Deadpool 2. Ironically, its delay #2 would come to avoid a similar clash with Phoenix, which took its intended February spot. Phoenix would later be released in June 2019, while the Fox acquisition led to another delay for Mutants, this time to April 2020. After a brief spell where it was taken off Disney’s release schedule, New Mutants eventually released in August 2020 during the pandemic.
Disney holding off on releasing both movies was a big deal at the time because they were the final closers on Fox’s long and divisive tenure with the X-Men. Without a real attempt to market either films as the end of an era, and the general acceptance that these characters would be linking up with the Avengers and Spider-Man in a few years, they both ultimately released to muted responses from critics and audiences alike. Phoenix’s box office amounted to $252.4 million (the first X-Men film to fail theatrically), and Mutants’ only made $49.1 million, ending the 20-year X-Men saga with a whimper.
The mutants await their third cinematic reboot.
