Deadline & Hollywood Reporter confirm rumors on Dark Phoenix

Now, Dark Phoenix was originally planned to be two movies, we hear, and during late pre-production, the studio changed gears and said it was to be one movie. Kinberg, we hear, was flexible and rewrote. Days of Future Past erased the timeline of The Last Stand, so a rebooted story about Jean Grey was possible here. Our sources tell us that testing Dark Phoenix was a continual headache, and the feature adaptation of Chris Claremont, John Byrne, and David Cockrum’s fan-beloved Dark Phoenix Saga comic was hard to get right.

At first, the movie had a release date of Nov. 2, 2018. With more work needed on the movie, it was pushed to Feb. 14, 2019. Then, with marketing already underway, Fox pushed the release date to June 3, 2019. Initially, the studio messaged that the move was to take advantage of a Chinese release and hopes for a strong global performance.

However, insiders tell THR that the move was to placate James Cameron, Fox’s most important filmmaker, and his concerns for his movie, Alita: Battle Angel. According to one source, Cameron felt Alita would lose horribly when facing a December opening weekend that included Aquaman and Bumblebee, with Mary Poppins Returns opening up two days earlier. He wanted his expensive movie shifted. Stacey Snider, according to this source, obliged, giving Alita the February date and moving Dark Phoenix to June. “Emma, Hutch and Simon begged her not do it,” says this source.

Part of the reasoning was that Dark Phoenix was not designed to be a summer movie, says the Fox insider. In some ways, it was designed to be an anti-Apocalypse, to have less spectacle and scale. Big for off-season, too small for summer, says this person.