This week sees the release of 20th Century Fox’s “X-Men: Dark Phoenix” in cinemas around the globe.

During a life-threatening rescue mission in space, Jean is hit by a cosmic force that transforms her into one of the most powerful mutants of all. Wrestling with this increasingly unstable power as well as her own personal demons, Jean spirals out of control, tearing the X-Men family apart and threatening to destroy the very fabric of our planet.

For the past 20 years, Fox has been making X-Men movies, which has led to some major problems for Marvel, especially once the Marvel Cinematic Universe arrived over 10 years ago, resulting in Disney trying to slow down interest in the X-Men franchise, by not pushing those characters as strongly as those it owned the full movie rights to.

Now that Disney have purchased 21st Century Fox, this has removed the problem and its very noticeable already, since Disney is actively promoting the movie with theme that this is the end of the era and they want fans to celebrate the X-Men movies history, with a tagline for the movie saying “It is the culmination of 20 years of X-Men movies!”.

Since X-Men: Dark Phoenix is not a “Marvel” movie, as it wasn’t created by Marvel, but it seems Disney are happy to promote the movie since they know it will still successful at the box office.

None of the previously released X-Men movies have yet been confirmed for Disney+, so its still possible that Disney will keep them separate from the MCU by moving them to Hulu (especially Deadpool and Logan).

But there is no denying that these movies have been extremely popular and Disney will want to capitalize on that success, especially with the majority of the X-Men movies being considered “family friendly”.   And the majority of the previously released movies aren’t available on any of the major streaming networks like Netflix or Amazon.

Movie rights are still a complicated issue, especially when it comes to streaming rights since 20th Century Fox has an existing deal with Stars for films until 2022, where they get the movies 10 months after they are released and have access to them for 18 months.

So it doesn’t look like we will see X-Men: Dark Phoenix on Disney+ or Hulu for a while, since it might not leave Starz until Fall 2021.   However, contracts can be broken or brought out, especially if Disney feel its beneficial for them to do so.

Are you going to see Dark Phoenix this week at cinemas?

Roger Palmer

Roger has been a Disney fan since he was a kid and this interest has grown over the years. He has visited Disney Parks around the globe and has a vast collection of Disney movies and collectibles. He is the owner of What's On Disney Plus & DisKingdom. Email: Roger@WhatsOnDisneyPlus.com Twitter: Twitter.com/RogPalmerUK Facebook: Facebook.com/rogpalmeruk

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