At one point, we were slated to have as many as TEN comic-book based films this year, three from Disney, two from Sony/Columbia, three from Fox and two from Warner Bros. Some online pundits were predicting doom and gloom for the box office, asserting that all of these aspiring blockbusters (which, apart from comic-book movies, included sequels galore to properties ranging from the Ocean's 11 franchise to the Incredibles) would cannibalize one another.
Well, so far, the good news is that with few exceptions, the movies that were expected to succeed have done exactly that.
When the trailers for Bumblebee and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse dropped this past week, I realized, however, that they were opening within one week of each other, and that Bumblebee was actually opening against Warner Brothers/DC's Aquaman, which meant that the prognostications of doom and gloom for the overall Hollywood box office (which, let's face it, is a globally consumed product), may yet prove accurate by the end of the year.
Bearing this in mind, then, I remembered Twentieth Century Fox's decision to postpone till 2019 the release of two of its three Marvel-based movies originally scheduled for release this year namely, X-Men: Dark Phoenix and New Mutants. The decision to postpone the latter film was genuinely surprising considering that a trailer had already been released several months ago.
Now, there could have been a number of different reasons for the postponement, ranging from the old "troubled production" dilemma to poor reception by test audiences, but whether or not these films were taken off the table because they were turkeys or because Fox simply didn't want to enter too crowded a market, at the end of the day they made the right move, and did everyone, them AND us, a favor.
After all, if the movies are bad, then they'll simply add to the superhero blockbuster glut and maybe even help induce the "superhero fatigue" that pundits have been predicting for years (which has yet to happen, incidentally). Conversely, if they're good, they may simply disappear amid the crowd of "great" films peppered all throughout the year. After all, neither X-Men: Dark Phoenix nor New Mutants carries with it the "event" status of Avengers: Infinity War or cultural milestone status of Black Panther (unless Fox wants to market New Mutants as the first superhero film with a Native American lead, but given that it's an ensemble piece that's not likely to work), or even the long-awaited-sequel status of The Incredibles 2. Deadpool 2 was a much easier sell, being the follow-up to a box-office juggernaut, but after X-Men: Apocalypse underperformed and given that New Mutants is a completely unknown commodity, caution was warranted. Was it a result of the planned Disney buyout? That seems unlikely, given that there's still a fair chance that Comcast may snatch up Fox instead of Disney.
Are the movies most likely to be bad, given extensive reports of reshoots? Well, reshoots aren't always a bad thing; Rogue One: A Star Wars story underwent quite a few reshoots and turned out pretty good. Even World War Z, an infamously troubled production which had to undergo reshoots for nearly the entire third act, opened to boffo box office all around the world, so it's early to say that all is lost for Fox's non-Deadpool Marvel movies. I, for one, remain cautiously optimistic.
In the end, postponing the movies, whether it was to avoid the crowd or to undergo reshoots, was really the best thing for the movies themselves and the viewing audience. And it was gratifying to know that Fox execs didn't rush the movies into theaters just to make sure they could claim their bonuses (coughcoughJUSTICELEAGUEcoughcough). What ultimately matters is that when the movies do hit theaters, they prove to be products that were worth the wait.
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