‘Dark Phoenix’ Director Simon Kinberg Explains The Reshoots & Why Fox Delayed The Film For A Second Time

A week ago, Fox was riding high about the release of the first trailer for the upcoming “X-Men” sequel “Dark Phoenix.” This was going to be the first time that fans really got to see what writer-director Simon Kinberg was cooking up for the world’s favorite mutant superheroes. Then the trailer hit. And it wasn’t bad, per se, but the footage failed to ignite any sort of buzz, as fans compared it to the failed “X-Men: The Last Stand.” Then Fox delayed the film 4 months. And now, what should have been a bunch of hype and goodwill has turned into more questions, with more doubt than ever before.

In a new interview with Collider, filmmaker Kinberg attempts to explain away all those concerns. He wants everyone to know that the reshoots, which were rumored to be quite extensive, were nothing more than typical studio additional photography. And he wants everyone to know that the delay had little to do with the trailer’s lack of buzz and more about presenting the best film at the right time. Your mileage may vary regarding how much you actually believe.

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In talking about what was specifically part of the reshoots (which he denies were anything major), Kinberg says, “Mostly we focused on the third act, both emotionally and in terms of the physical scale and the action of the third act that we adjusted. And then there were certain things in the first two acts of the movie—very few things, but to set up those changes in the third act we had to adjust some things in the first two acts so that all was fluid and felt consistent.”

This falls in line with an earlier report that says the film was beefing up the action in the third act. Hopefully, this is what we can expect, and not another replay of 2015’s “Fantastic Four,” which completely overhauled the third act into something much, much worse.

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However, the reshoots are old news. The big news is the delay. Why did Fox’s seemingly final film in the current “X-Men” series (before being gobbled up by Disney) release a trailer only to change the date 48 hours later? Kinberg says it’s for SFX work and box office potential.

“Some of the trailers had ‘Coming Soon’ on them and some of them said ‘February 14th’. It was a date, February 14th, that we initially liked for the movie but when we realized that we weren’t gonna have the visual effects ready to release it globally the way we wanted to, and the ‘Gambit’ date opened up because it wasn’t gonna be ready for that June 7th date. We looked at that date versus the February 14th date, the studio did and we did, we felt like that June date was a bigger opportunity for us globally,” explained the director.

Makes sense. It’s been speculated that Fox wanted a bigger play in China, and a summer release is a better chance at that. However, it still doesn’t explain why the marketing team kept the February date on it. Surely, they had to know the film was going to be delayed when they released the trailer, right? Well, not so fast.

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Kinberg explains that he would have still released the trailer, considering the delay, but would have changed something, saying, “So I would’ve still released a teaser when we released it, I just would’ve put ‘Coming Soon’ on the end of it or I would’ve put ‘June 7th’, though we hadn’t made that decision [at the time].”

Wait, so when the trailer was released, the date was February 14. Then two days later, the delay was decided? That doesn’t make sense, at all. Sure, it’s possible, but with the reasons given for the delay (additional work on SFX and a bigger global box office), Fox knew the time was needed well before the release of the trailer. It just doesn’t add up.

Regardless, what’s done is done. The new release date (the film’s third total) is here. Let’s just hope for the best.

“Dark Phoenix” should (for real, this time) hit theaters on June 7, 2019.