With Dark Phoenix now hitting theaters, here is everything we know about the X-Men's movie future. 20th Century Fox kicked off the long-running franchise based on Marvel characters in 2000 and helped shape what superhero movies would look like for the coming years (and decades). The grounded but slightly futuristic approach to the X-Men movies fit well with what audiences wanted to see at the turn of the millennia, although the franchise has changed and expanded in many ways since.
The Fox X-Men franchise began with two solid and successful entries, but then X-Men: The Last Stand gave the trilogy a less than stellar conclusion. The studio decided to continue with the franchise by giving Hugh Jackman's Wolverine, the unquestioned star of the initial wave of X-Men movies, a solo movie exploring his origins. When that didn't work, the studio quickly soft-rebooted the series by going back to the 1960s to show the beginning of the team's formation in X-Men: First Class. While they've done more Wolverine solo films, delivered two proper Deadpool films, and experimented with other ways to expand the franchise, the core of it has always been the main series.
Dark Phoenix is the fourth installment of the new series and the seventh overall but also marks the end of an era. Disney has bought 20th Century Fox, and with it the rights to the X-Men movies, meaning a lot of planned projects have been scrapped and a total reboot of the series is imminent. Here is everything we know about the future of the X-Men franchise on the big screen after Dark Phoenix, from retooling and delaying upcoming releases to a brand new future.
Nineteen years after the original X-Men movie hit theaters, Dark Phoenix officially closes the door on the main franchise for Fox. Dark Phoenix stars the First Class ensemble with the younger cast of Sophie Turner (Jean Grey), Tye Sheridan (Cyclops), Kodi Smit-McPhee (Nightcrawler), and Alexandra Shipp (Storm) introduced in X-Men: Apocalypse stepping into more significant roles. It is directed by longtime franchise writer Simon Kinberg and adapts the Dark Phoenix Saga comic storyline for the second time in the entire series.
Unfortunately, the reviews for Dark Phoenix point to another disappointing adaptation and series capper. The results may be disappointing all on their own but will sting longtime fans of the franchise even more since this is the final X-Men film: Fox previously had hopes that Dark Phoenix would be the start of a brand new trilogy of films centered around the young cast, but these plans have been abandoned. Also scrapped as a result of the Disney deal are over a dozen in-development X-Men movies.
While the main X-Men series from Fox is over and no more films entering production, they do still have one more mutant-related property coming: The New Mutants. The movie is a low-budget haunted house-style horror movie but with superpowers, and the first trailer (which was released over eighteen-months ago) showed that they executed this idea. However, reports then surfaced that reshoots were coming that would either add more horror or lessen it, depending on the source.
