Not to be distracted by the small matter of the Oscars this weekend, studio Fox have been doing a spot of release-date reshuffling. And while the news is muted for X-Men spin-off Gambit, it's more positive for the return of two monster franchises. Alien: Covenant will now be with us sooner than we thought, while The Predator now has a firm date for his unleashing.
Unlike its predecssor Prometheus, which came out in December of 2012, Fox have now staked Ridley Scott's Alien: Covenant as a full-on summer tentpole, picthing it on August 4, 2017. That shows a good deal of confidence on Fox's part that a "proper" new Alien after the curveball of Prometheus is a big thing indeed. It also gets it safely out of the way of Star Wars: Episode VIII, with its only direct competition on its new date currently Pitch Perfect 3 and Blazing Samurai.
Shane Black's The Predator, meanwhile, opens on March 2, 2018, likely more-or-less kicking off that year's "summer" blockbuster season. It currently shares its slot with an as-yet unnamed Warner Bros. big-hitter: probably a DC superhero movie; possibly the Ezra Miller- starring The Flash (Aquaman is slated for July the same year).
Fox has also shifted Tim Burton's Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiars out of its packed December slot into a quieter berth on September 30 this year. Avoiding Rogue One and Assassin's Creed, it'll now face Peter Berg's oil rig disaster movie Deepwater Horizon.
Alien: Covenant stars Katherine Waterston, Michael Fassbender, Demián Bichir, Jussie Smollett, Carmen Ejogo and Danny McBride. It's set ten years after Prometheus, has proper Aliens in it, and has been confirmed by Ridley Scott as aiming for an R-rating: itself significant for an August blockbuster.
Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiars is adapted by Jane Goldman from Ransom Riggs’ novel, and finds Hugo’s Asa Butterfield discovering the ruined gothic institution once run by Eva Green. Samuel L. Jackson, Judi Dench and Allison Janney are some of the inmates who never left...
And we don't know much about The Predator yet, but we're very excited.
