Fox Calls Dark Phoenix ‘Perfect Send-Off’ For X-Men

When word of the Fox-Disney merger first surfaced, comic book fans were quick to realise that the deal’s completion would mean a major coup for Marvel – they’d have the rights to use the X-Men and Fantastic Four characters on the big screen. With X-Men: Dark Phoenix still yet to arrive this summer, it’s long been thought that it would mark the final instalment of the Fox-driven X-Men movies before the mutants are somehow rebooted into Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe – and Fox have all-but-confirmed that to be the case.

At CinemaCon in Las Vegas, senior Fox exec Emma Watts introduced some Dark Phoenix footage – and called the film the “perfect send-off for our X-Men team” (as reported by THR{=nofollow}). While it always seemed unlikely that Disney would continue releasing James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender-fronted X-Men movies unconnected from their world-beating comic book movie universe, it’s interesting to hear word from someone on the inside that Dark Phoenix really is the end of Fox’s 19-year-old franchise. However, it seems Disney does intend to continue Ryan Reynolds’ ultra-popular Deadpool movies without a reboot – a spin-off which has largely existed outside of the main X-universe, and whose meta nature could easily survive an unashamed shoe-horning into the MCU.

X-Men: Dark Phoenix is set to arrive in UK cinemas on 5 June, with troubled spin-off The New Mutants currently scheduled in to arrive on 2 August. With little word on the much-delayed mutant-horror, reports of a direct-to-streaming release, and Maisie Williams claiming the much-mentioned re-shoots haven’t even happened yet, chalk the latter up as a big ol’ question mark, though there was a reassuring nod to the film on the Disney release schedule put on screen at the event.

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