X-Men: Dark Phoenix was originally supposed to come out November 2, 2018, before it was pushed back to February 14, 2019… and again to June 9, which is still a less-tortured schedule reshuffling than The New Mutants. Why the lengthy delay? According to star James McAvoy, it was due to reshoots, specifically how the ending had to be changed due to similarities to another superhero film.
“The end [of Dark Phoenix] changed a hell of a lot. The finale had to change,” the Glass star told Yahoo! Movies. “There was a lot of overlap and parallels with another superhero movie that came out… a while ago. And we had no idea that we were… We were basically trawling through the source material it seems.”
While it would be hilarious if Dark Phoenix had the same ending as, like, The Green Hornet or Catwoman (wait until you see Mystique ballin’ on the court!), McAvoy is probably referring to Captain Marvel. Early reports had the bad-aliens-who-are-actually-good-aliens Skrulls appearing in both the Brie Larson-starring and 12th X-Men film, but based on comments made by producer Hutch Parker, it’s likely the similarity in finales had to do with the setting: space:
“There was more of a cosmic story… the story ended in space in a much more significant way. We actually shifted that to be back on Earth, most notably, so that we can involve our main characters and see them come together. We wanted the family to be the thing that motivated Jean to finally embrace her identity, and finally, to allow love to be what allows her to transcend and evolve. But in the first iteration, they weren’t present when she’s going through a lot of the third act stuff. So we rejigged it so that we could dramatize the degree to which this divided family had come back together for her… that she could witness that, and, and bring [Jessica] Chastain into that sequence.
Of course, the only way we’ll know if the “another superhero movie” is, indeed, Captain Marvel is if there’s a deleted scene of Beast puking up the Tesseract.
(Via Yahoo! and Digital Spy)