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.