Okay, before we get into unpacking that headline, first we'll give you a little back-story...
Earlier this week, we got our first trailer for Dark Phoenix, the latest entry into the X-Men universe, retelling Jean Grey's connection with a world-ending space entity.
If you watch the trailer, it says on there that it will be arriving in cinemas on 14 February 2019...
Clip via 20th Century Fox UK
Literally a day or two later, 20th Century Fox announced that it was now being pushed back to 7 June 2019, taking the spot previously occupied by another Fox comic-book movie, Gambit.
That movie, which still has Channing Tatum attached as the title mutant, has had problems keeping a director, as both Rupert Wyatt (Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes) and Gore Verbinski (Pirates Of The Caribbean) came and went. As it stands, Simon Kinberg (Dark Phoenix) is on course to direct it this summer, with a new release date of 13 March 2020 in sight.
Taking Dark Phoenix's original release date of 14 February 2019 is Fox's new sci-fi epic Alita. Based on a hugely popular manga series, director Robert Rodriguez (Sin City) and producer James Cameron (Avatar) are most likely hoping the new release date will line up nicely with Chinese New Year and make some serious international bank.
Clip via 20th Century Fox
Fox originally had Alita set for release on 21 December 2018, which would put it up against Paramount's Bumblebee, Warner Bros.' Aquaman, Sony's Holmes & Watson, Universal's Welcome to Marwen, AND Disney's Mary Poppins Returns, all of which are due for release that same week.
Now, taking Alita's place, Fox have announced that on 21 December 2018, they're releasing an Untitled Deadpool Movie.
Ryan Reynolds tweeted out what may well be the first official image from the movie:
https://twitter.com/VancityReynolds/status/1045750002994302978
That seems to show Deadpool in a Santa outfit, reading to Fred Savage, in much the same way that Peter Falk did for a much younger Fred Savage back in The Princess Bride.
From that, and if you remember in The Princess Bride that Falk left out some of the more "adult" parts of the story for young Savage, we're guessing that the new Deadpool movie will actually be a PG-13/12A version of Deadpool 2 (or the first Deadpool? Or a mix of both?), which would only add to the combined box office of $1.5 billion of those two movies.
Or maybe - and this is a BIG maybe - they did shoot a secret third movie and it is arriving sooner than anyone anticipated? It would make a certain kind of Deadpool-y sense for a secret movie to arrive out of nowhere, but for now, all we have is speculation.
Speculation, and a lot of movie calendars to update.
