Orignally, Dark Phoenix was supposed to drop on November 2, 2018, but difficulties in bringing the required actors back for reshoots meant they needed to make sure there was enough time for post-production work to be done properly, all of which contributed to postponing the release.
Everything We Know So Far About 'X-Men: Dark Phoenix'
As much as we love the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there's a whole other stream of Marvel movies that has been going on for even longer.
Fox's X-Men franchise is getting ready to release its next (and possibly final, but we'll get to that later) entry in the movies series that showed the world just how much fun superhero movies could be.
With X-Men: Dark Phoenix, Sophie Turner's Jean Grey is taking the lead and pushing the franchise further than it has ever been taken before. Here's what we know so far.
The movie's current release date is slated for February 14, 2019.
The movie is the directorial debut of Simon Kinberg.
Don't let his lack of directorial experience worry you, though. Kinberg has been involved in a huge chunk of the X-Men franchise, writing or cowriting four of the movies and producing seven.
The bulk of the story will be based on the classic comic book storyline "The Dark Phoenix Saga."
The 1980 series of comic book stories shows Jean Grey hit with a solar flare that brings about the full extent of her psychic powers. The story arc eventually sees her become a more powerful being, which she calls "Phoenix."
Her new supreme power makes her vulnerable to persuasion, though, and eventually leads to having to face off against the X-Men on several occasions as they try to control her potentially apocalyptic power and restore the humanity of Jean Grey.
This is writer and director Simon Kinberg's second time adapting this story, and this time he hopes to do things a little differently.
"The Dark Phoenix Saga" was notoriously made into a side-plot in the underwhelming third X-Men movie, The Last Stand, cowritten by Kinberg. From comments Kinberg made, reported by Cinema Blend, it seems that this time around, the idea is to keep the movie more in line with the comic story.
In fact, the classic story was almost adapted as part of the first X-Men sequel, X2.
*The Hollywood Reporter* reports that writer Zak Penn found the idea to put Dark Phoenix in X2 was hard to put aside, but ultimately, "it was too soon to go into the Phoenix story and it was too soon to get cosmic."
And speaking of cosmic, Dark Phoenix will see the X-Men in space for the very first time on screen.
As mentioned above, the original "Dark Phoenix" story begins when Jean Grey is hit with a solar flare. As far as we can tell, this will happen in the film version, which may also include aliens for the first time in the franchise.
Don't worry about what you saw in The Last Stand, though. The events of X-Men: Days of Future Past mean that pretty much anything can happen.
Granted, branching timelines can be confusing, but the end of Days of Future Past basically hit a reset on the original X-Men movies.
The way Simon Kinberg puts it according to Cinema Blend, things are "not leading, necessarily, toward exactly where we found Patrick Stewart and the X-Men at the beginning of X1. There are some things obviously that lead in that general direction that was part of sort of the philosophy I guess at the end of Days of Future Past is that you can’t fully change the course or current of the river but you can just divert it a little bit."
According to Entertainment Weekly, Sophie Turner studied schizophrenia and multiple personality disorders to prepare for the role.
While contained within the same body, The Phoenix and Jean Grey are essentially two different personalities. One is a powerful, cosmic being with all the confidence in the universe, and the other is Jean Grey, a vulnerable young woman who worries about her boyfriend and how she fits in with the rest of the world.
According to Screen Rant, the relationship between Jean and Scott Summers (aka Cyclops, played by Tye Sheridan) will be a "huge part of the narrative."
While we saw the flickerings of a romance in X-Men: Apocalypse, it seems that the relationship between Jean and Scott will have matured quite a bit in the 9-year gap between movies. We'll also see Scott stepping up as the field leader of the X-Men.
According to Entertainment Weekly, the movie intentionally focuses on its female characters.
From its lead, Jean Grey, to Mystique (played by a returning Jennifer Lawrence), to a new villain, Dark Phoenix is unabashedly interested in highlighting the so-called X-Women. In fact, that's what drew noted feminist Jessica Chastain to the movie in the first place.
Jessica Chastain will play an "otherwordly shapeshifter," credited simply as "Smith," who tries to use Jean for her own purposes.
Chastain was long rumored to be playing Lilandra, empress of an alien empire, but according to Chastain herself in comments on an Instagram post, that's not who she's playing.
According to Screen Rant, Magneto (Michael Fassbender) is back, and he has set up a refuge for mutants on the Island of Genosha.
As always, Magneto seems to be more than willing to push his fellow mutants to embrace their power, and in Dark Phoenix, he's poised to do the same for Jean.
Dazzler is set to make her debut, according to reporting by Entertainment Weekly.
Having previously been teased in a deleted scene in X-Men: Apocalypse, the light-manipulating pop star mutant is rumored to be played by Halston Sage.
A couple of other new characters will be making their on-screen debuts, namely Selene Gallio (Black Queen) and Paul Hark (Red Lotus).
In the comics, Black Queen and Red Lotus are both members of the mutant terrorist organization The Hellfire Club, which we last saw in X-Men: First Class.
According to Entertainment Weekly, the movie "includes a massive twist halfway through that will irrevocably change the course of the franchise."
Very few people actually know what this twist will be, but we're sure that it's all we'll be talking about come February.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Dark Phoenix was originally expected to be the first in a new trilogy of X-Men movies, but that future is now up in the air.
Deadline has reported that with Disney acquiring 21st Century Fox, the plan is to see the Marvel Cinematic Universe absorb the Fantastic Four, X-Men, and Deadpool franchises, although it's unclear exactly how or when that will all take place.
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