'The New Mutants' Release Date Pushed Back to 2019

Fox's slate of upcoming X-Men movies has just undergone quite a bit of change, and it looks like The New Mutants is among them.

The Hollywood Reporter just revealed that the horror-inspired X-Men film will now get a significantly later release date, jumping from April 13th, 2018 to February 22nd, 2019.

According to the report, this was partially influenced by the film's potential international market, as it would have overlapped in some countries with the release of Deadpool 2.

Deadpool 2 also received a new release date, moving up two weeks from June 1st to May 18th. And the Gambit solo movie - which was just met with yet another director exit this morning - has been pushed from February 14th, 2019 to June 7th, 2019.

The New Mutants is inspired by the classic story "The Demon Bear Saga" and is planned to be the first installment in an X-Men movies horror trilogy.

"We brought it to FOX as a trilogy of films, really all based on that long run by [Bill] Sienkiewicz, and kind of incorporates some stuff from later issues in the '80s," director Josh Boone explained last year. "These are all going to be horror movies, and they're all be their own distinct kind of horror movies. This is certainly the 'rubber-reality' supernatural horror movie. The next one will be a completely different kind of horror movie."

Interestingly, this move places New Mutants in a pretty unique situation, thanks to the merger between Fox and Walt Disney Studios. At the time of the merger, fans worried if future New Mutants installments would be in jeopardy, since the franchise is much more niche than Disney's traditional Marvel properties. But now this new 2019 release date could place New Mutants after the Disney merger officially takes effect.

"If Disney is an NFL team, then every movie on the calendar is like a Heisman Trophy winner." One insider said of the smaller-scale X-Men films last month. "This raises the bar of what is a theatrical release."

The New Mutants will now be released on February 22nd, 2019.