Here’s Every X-Men Project That Could Be In Danger Now That Disney Owns Fox

The future of the X-Men franchise is totally up in the air at the moment, following the recent announcement that, after weeks of rumours, Disney has indeed bought out Fox.

In the immediate future, of course, nothing much will change. For instance, there are already three X-films from Fox coming in 2018: April’s The New Mutants, June’s Deadpool 2 and November’s X-Men: Dark Phoenix. After that, though, who knows what’s going to happen to the slate of movies – not to mention the franchise’s associated TV shows – that are in the works?

By this point, you’d be forgiven if you’ve lost track of all the potential future installments of the series, so we’ve put together a quick list of what’s coming down the pipeline, along with which ones might be in danger of getting the axe now that Disney’s in the picture. Again, these are just our predictions, as the Mouse House hasn’t made it totally clear yet what they plan to do with the mutants, but we’d bet that at least a few of these won’t make it in front of the camera.

• Gambit  – After being trapped in development hell for years, Gambit – starring Channing Tatum as the Ragin’ Cajun – finally landed Gore Verbinski as director a few months ago. But, after all that, Disney could just pull the plug for good given how much trouble the project’s had so far.
• X-23 – Following Logan‘s success, director James Mangold has said that he would be interested in building a film around Dafne Keen’s Wolverine clone Laura. However, evidence points to Disney simply rebooting Wolvie instead, meaning this probably won’t happen anymore.
• Legion/ The Gifted – Both of Fox’s recent X-Men TV shows have been met with positive critical responses but middling ratings success. Unfortunately, this could be enough for Disney to want to clear them both out.
• Doctor Doom – Noah Hawley announced that he’s working on a Doctor Doom solo movie at this summer’s Comic-Con, but unfortunately, we can’t see that happening now.
• X-Men: Dark Phoenix Sequel – We can assume that Fox has plans for another mainline X-Men movie after Dark Phoenix, but it’s impossible to say what form it will take at this point, or which cast members will return.

• Multiple Man – James Franco’s hard R-rated movie about mutant detective Jamie Maddox may be put on ice now, given that the character isn’t exactly an A-lister.
• Fantastic Four 2 – Despite the abject failure of 2015’s reboot, writer/producer Simon Kinberg has maintained that the studio always wanted to make a sequel. Now, though, the Four will probably just be rebooted again.
• The New Mutants 2 & 3 – Josh Boone has made clear that he has a trilogy of New Mutants movies in mind, but we’ll have to see whether the first one makes enough of a splash to warrant any follow-ups.
• X-Force – We think this one is pretty safe, considering Deadpool 2 has put a lot of energy into setting it up, but the X-Force movie might not be what Disney is after.
• Deadpool Animated Series – Likewise, Deadpool’s popularity suggests an animated series is a good idea, but its mature nature might not gel with the House of Mouse’s sensibilities.

Of course, at this junction, it’s difficult to say exactly what Disney will do with the X-Men franchise. The obvious answer is that it will simply be cancelled, with the property handed over to Marvel Studios to restart from scratch as part of the MCU. Alternatively, Disney CEO Bob Iger has talked about keeping the X-Men’s “brand” separate, which hints that maybe most of Fox’s projects will go ahead.

Again, no one really knows right now and we won’t have a firm answer for a while. But in the meantime, tell us, which of these X-Men movies and TV shows would you like to see Disney move forward with? Sound off in the usual place below!