Disney Plays Musical Chairs with Fox Movie Release Dates, Knocks Four Marvel Films off the Schedule

The Disney-Fox merger isn’t exactly a Brady Bunch situation, with two families blending together accompanied by minor awkward adjustments. This is more like if Mike Brady and his sons kicked down Carol Martin’s door and completely rearranged her and her daughters’ lives to their liking. Case in point: the number of films that have been shuffled around following Disney’s acquisition of Fox, some of which have been removed from the schedule altogether.

Marvel’s Gambit, starring Channing Tatum, was originally slated for April 13, 2020, but the troubled X-Men spin-off has now been removed from the calendar. Three other untitled Marvel films have also been taken off the schedule; however, as Entertainment Weekly notes, “this could simply mean that characters from the Fox-owned universe could transition to Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe.” Let’s face it: Disney would never pass up Marvel money. Maisie Williams’ X-Men vehicle New Mutants has been pushed back yet again, this time from August of this year to an April 3, 2020, release, despite filming ending in 2017.

Speaking of franchises, three unnamed Star Wars films have nabbed release dates: They are set to come out on Dec. 16, 2022, Dec. 12, 2024, and Dec. 18, 2026. It’s currently unclear if these films are the trilogy being created by Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, the other trilogy from The Last Jedi writer-director Rian Johnson, or something else entirely. The Avatar sequels are being delayed once more, as Avatar 2 is being pushed back from Dec. 18, 2020, to Dec. 17, 2021. Avatar 3, which was supposed to come out in December 2021, will hit theaters on Dec. 22, 2023, and Avatar 4 will be released on Dec. 29, 2025, instead of December 2024. Avatar 5 has been delayed from December 2025 to Dec. 27, 2027. So Disney will basically be alternating entries in these two titanic franchises until the earth is a burnt-out husk.

Artemis Fowl, based on the popular children’s books of the same name, has been scheduled for May 29, 2020, instead of its original August 2019 release. Dec. 18, 2020 has been revealed as the long-awaited premiere date of Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story (key question,, though: Will the Jets and the Sharks be allowed to smoke cigarettes?). Cruella, starring Emma Stone as the fur-fixated titular character, is set to be released on Dec. 23, 2020. And as if all that weren’t enough, we’re also apparently getting a Bob’s Burgers movie on July 17, 2020, and a new Indiana Jones movie on July 9, 2021.

See Disney’s full updated slate below.

THIS JUST IN: Disney announces release dates through 2027! pic.twitter.com/09Ls7nprKM

— Erik Davis (@ErikDavis) May 7, 2019