Fox Deals In ‘Gambit’ Movie For October 2016; Shuffles ‘FF 2′ Forward To June 2017
20th Century Fox has announced a couple of updates to its roster of Marvel movies for the next couple of years, formally slotting the Channing Tatum-led Gambit movie into an October 7th release date, and moving Fantastic Four 2 forward a month, from July 14th 2017 to June 2nd 2017. We've updated our Supermovies infographic with the new dates, so you can enjoy a complete and up-to-date view of the next few years, and visualize all of your money disappearing.
The Gambit movie is scheduled for much sooner than most observers expected -- late next year -- and brings the number of Fox X-Men movies scheduled for next year up to three, with Deadpool in February and X-Men: Apocalypse in May. This makes Fox the first of the four studios in the current supermovies race to release three major shared-universe superhero movies in a single year; Marvel Studios will repeat the feat in 2017 and 2018.
Whether Fox has ambitions to do the same every year hereafter may depend on how these three X-Men movies and the two Fantastic Four movies perform. We'll get our first clues when Fantastic Four comes out in August. The rest of Fox's schedule for 2017 is starting to fill up already; Fantastic Four 2 was moved forward to make room for another Planet Of The Apes movie. Still, one might imagine a scenario in which Fox, Marvel, Warner Bros and Sony all release three superhero movies in a single year, for an average of one a month, though that's almost certainly unsustainable.
Gambit has been seen on our screens before, played by the rilly rilly good-looking Taylor Kitsch in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. That movie was so bad that it was basically knocked out of continuity when Wolverine punched the walls of reality in X-Men: Days Of Future Past, resulting in a second chance for Ryan Reynolds' Deadpool, and a new face and hips for Gambit, now played by the rilly rilly good-looking Channing Tatum. Some fans have expressed skepticism about Tatum as Gambit, but we think a charming ex-stripper and former Abercrombie model is a great choice for the role, and we're excited to see him step up.
Our infographic includes all currently announced supermovies based on DC and Marvel comic book properties, with Warner Bros' plans reaching through 2020, and Marvel's through to early 2019. Fox hasn't announced any titles beyond summer 2017, but has staked a claim on July 2018 for another X-Men movie -- and has talked in the past about a possible X-Force pic. Further Fox dates seem likely, especially now that they're making solo X-Men movies that don't feature Wolverine.
The biggest unknown quantity on the chart is Sony Columbia. The recent leak of confidential Sony documents by hackers protesting the Seth Rogen/James Franco movie The Interview revealed that Sony has talked to Marvel Studios about some sort of production partnership for the Spider-Man franchise. It's now unclear if Sony plans another reboot of that franchise, or if it will go ahead with Amazing Spider-Man 3 and its outlined spin-off plans, which include a Sinister Six movie, a Venom movie, and a movie with an unnamed female lead. (Possibly a young Aunt May.) (This is a terrible idea.)