20th Century Fox announced a bunch of release dates tonight:
- The Fantastic Four reboot is still casting for a 2015 release, but Fox is ready to plan The Fantastic Four 2 for July 14, 2017.
- The sequel to The Wolverine hits theaters March 3, 2017. [Update: Deadline reports that Fox has set David James Kelly to pen the sequel, which returns James Mangold to the helm with Hugh Jackman starring.]
- An untitled Marvel film is scheduled for July 13, 2018.
- Liam Neeson returns for Taken 3 on January 9, 2015.
- An unspecified Ridley Scott feature is dated for March 4, 2016.
- Matthew Vaughn's The Secret Service (now October 24, 2014) and an untitled Vince Vaughn vehicle (now March 6, 2015) switched release dates.
- Frankenstein starring Daniel Radcliffe is pushed back from January 16, 2015 to October 2, 2015.
More on the Marvel stuff after the jump.
It was reported last year that Fox recruited X-Men: Days of Future Past writer Simon Kinberg to create a superhero movie universe in the vein of the Marvel Studio line that led to The Avengers. Fox has the movie rights for two major Marvel properties: X-Men and Fantastic Four.
The untitled 2018 Fox/Marvel movie could draw from X-Men or Fantastic Four---either a direct sequel or spinoff films. (Maybe the studio wants to revisit Deadpool or a Silver Surfer standalone movie?) Heat Vision suggests it could be an X-Men/Fantastic Four crossover in the report on release dates. After all, a crossover on that scale would be the ultimate goal of a Marvel-style universe with the Fox-owned characters.
Here is the schedule for Fox's upcoming Marvel movies:
- X-Men: Days of Future Past - May 23, 2014
- The Fantastic Four - June 19, 2015
- X-Men: Apocalypse - May 27, 2016
- Untitled Wolverine sequel - March 3, 2017
- The Fantastic Four 2 - July 14, 2017
- Untitled Marvel movie - July 13, 2018
Regarding the other announcements: Ridley Scott is always attached to many projects, so that could be anything. I think the most intriguing possibility is Prometheus 2.