Just one day removed from the release of the X-Men: Dark Phoenix trailer, 20th Century Fox has drastically altered their film release schedule.
Alita: Battle Angel moves from December 21st, 2018 to February 14th, 2019. It is believed that this move was done to move the project to after the Chinese New Year (February 5th, 2019) and that the film is still on track with post-production.
Alita‘s new date, however, was the previously established release date for X-Men: Dark Phoenix, which has now been pushed back to a Summer release of June 7th, 2019.
With December 21st now available, it is rumored that Fox will use that date to release an ‘Untitled Deadpool’ film, thought to be a PG-13 re-release of the blockbuster hit.
With the June 7th slot now occupied, the alleged Gambit film starring Channing Tatum has been pushed all the way back to March 13, 2020. This news comes on the heels of yesterday’s announcement from producer Simon Kinberg that Gambit will be something of a romantic comedy. It bears noting, however, that the script is not finalized and there is still no director attached to project, which seems a fairly viable reason to push back the release date by nearly a year. Those tend to be fairly important components of film-making.