With their studio now officially owned by Disney, Fox will be bidding farewell to the X-MEN with another adaptation of the iconic Dark Phoenix storyline. After nearly being killed by a mysterious cosmic force in space, Jean Grey (Sophie Turner) returns home to find that this force has made her infinitely more powerful, but also far more unstable. Unable to control her new powers, Jean Grey causes the death of a fellow team-member (if you've watched the trailers, you already know who kicks the bucket) and the remaining X-Men struggle with whether to save or destroy Jean Grey for the sake of human and mutant-kind.
It's safe to say that Jean Grey will go full-on villain at some point in the film, and a new image from Entertainment Weekly finds Grey roasting some poor bastard (Tye Sheridan's Cyclops?) with her new powers. There's also another image of the X-Men, including Professor X (James McAvoy), Magneto (Michael Fassbender) Beast (Nicholas Hoult), and more, facing off against someone or something.
As expected with most blockbusters these days, DARK PHOENIX underwent a series of reshoots, and director Simon Kinberg says that the reshoots for DARK PHOENIX wound up completely changing the third act. Instead of taking place in space, the new climax will find all the X-Men having been kidnapped and on board a military train. They also revamped the look of Phoenix in post-production, going more "cosmic" and less "flamy." Although Kinberg has been a writer/producer on the X-MEN franchise for well over a decade, DARK PHOENIX serves as his directorial debut, and he admits that the film proved to be a rather complicated first outing.
"I think the biggest challenge is modulating the film so that we have the big scale and visual-effects action that these movies require, but balancing that in a way that feels calibrated with the drama," Kinberg said. "You have these big space sequences and trains flying through the air and people firing lightning bolts, but you also have a lot of emotional, four-page dramatic dialogue scenes."
The official synopsis for DARK PHOENIX:
In DARK PHOENIX, the X-MEN face their most formidable and powerful foe: one of their own, Jean Grey. During a rescue mission in space, Jean is nearly killed when she is hit by a mysterious cosmic force. Once she returns home, this force not only makes her infinitely more powerful, but far more unstable. Wrestling with this entity inside her, Jean unleashes her powers in ways she can neither comprehend nor contain. With Jean spiraling out of control, and hurting the ones she loves most, she begins to unravel the very fabric that holds the X-Men together. Now, with this family falling apart, they must find a way to unite — not only to save Jeanâ??s soul, but to save our very planet from aliens who wish to weaponize this force and rule the galaxy.
DARK PHOENIX will hit theaters on June 7, 2019.