Fantastic Four 2, Wolverine 3, Untitled Fox/Marvel Movie Get Release Dates in 2017-2018

Fox have announced plans to release a second Fantastic Four movie, the next Wolverine movie from director James Mangold and an as-yet-undisclosed Fox/Marvel collaboration over the next four years or so.Via their Twitter account, BoxOffice.com announced a number of changes to Fox’s upcoming release schedule, starting in 2015 and rolling straight through to 2018.According to the account, the third Wolverine film is due in theaters on March 3, 2017, to be followed closely by Fantastic Four 2 on July 14 of that year.  An untitled Fox/Marvel film will reportedly hit on July 13, 2018. Director James Mangold recently revealed via Twitter that the plan was to shoot the film after X-Men: Apocalypse. It’s not clear whether star Hugh Jackman will return or whether he will be replaced.While the immediate conclusion for some has been to jump to the rumored Fantastic Four/X-Men crossover film as 2018’s offering, the more likely candidate seems to be Jeff Wadlow’s X-Force, which has still not been officially released, even though everyone from studio brass down to X-Force creator Rob Liefeld have spoken openly about the project since word of its existence leaked during Comic Con last summer.Fantastic Four is set to start shooting in April for a release in July 2015; that would put the film on a two-year turnaround to hit the 2017 target, giving each film more than a year in production. To hit the July 13, 2018 target for a crossover with the X-Men, the Fantastic Four cast would have to film the movies back-to-back, with the filmmakers going into post-production on Fantastic Four 2 while the cast is working on the next movie without them. That’s not entirely implausible, but seems unlikely.The studio also announced an October, 2014 release date for Mark Millar’s The Secret Service.