According to The Hollywood Reporter, Fox’s announcement includes pushing back its scheduled 2016 Planet Of The Apes sequel a full year to July 14, 2017, so don’t even think about releasing a Transformers or 007 sequel that weekend. Also in 2017, Fantastic Four 2 (the sequel to this summer’s reboot) was moved up to June 2, 2017, to make room for Apes in July, while Channing Tatum’s X-Men spinoff Gambit is slotted for October 7, 2016.
Meanwhile, now free of Apes, Fox is filling its July 29, 2016 date with the comedy Mike & Dave Need Wedding Dates (possibly because the title subconsciously guilted them into it). Later that year, Assassin’s Creed will make a highly stylized, lethal swan dive from video game consoles into movie theaters on December 21, 2016, when it will attempt to extinguish the box-office life from Disney’s first standalone Star Wars film.
Soon thereafter, The Greatest Showman On Earth, a live-action musical starring Hugh Jackman as P.T. Barnum, will wow audiences on Christmas 2016. And Fox is betting that by 2017, star-crossed lovers will be out, and plane-crashed lovers will be in, scheduling the Charlie Hunnam/Rosamund Pike survivor romance The Mountain Between Us for February 10, just in time for Valentine’s Day.
