With comic book movies regularly performing as the biggest blockbusters that Hollywood has to offer, 20th Century Fox is in the midst of setting things up so that they will have projects continually coming out over the next few years. In addition to X-Men: Days of Future Past, which will be coming out this May, the studio already has their Fantastic Four reboot scheduled to come out next year, and X-Men: Apocalypse set for 2016, but now they've officially added three more big titles to their own developing Marvel cinematic universe.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the studio has announced release dates for the untitled sequel to James Mangold's The Wolverine, Fantastic Four 2 and even a special mystery project. The films are set for 2017 and beyond, with the next Wolverine set for March 3, 2017, the Fantastic Four sequel penciled in for July 14, 2017, and the last one arriving on July 13, 2018.
Of all the projects, The Wolverine sequel is easily the one that's furthest along. Last November it was announced that not only would Hugh Jackman be returning to play the lead, but that Mangold had signed on to come back as well. In addition to earning largely positive reviews, the last Wolverine movie made over $400 million at the global box office, which shows that there is still a great deal of interest in the franchise.
Fantastic Four 2 is a bit more of a mystery. Fox is only now really getting close to the start of production on the reboot - which will start filming next month - so it's a surprise to see that they are already planning for a big future. Presumably stars Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Bell have all signed multi-picture deals that will keep them playing their superhero roles in many films, but right now we don't know if director Josh Trank will be coming back as well (it probably all depends on how good the movie turns out).
The mystery 2018 project is intriguing for many reasons, as Fox owns the rights to many awesome Marvel characters who should get their own movie (*cough*Deadpool*cough*), but the smart money may be that the project will end up being the Fox's answer to Marvel Studios' The Avengers and will turn out to be a X-Men/Fantastic Four cross-over movie. It would certainly go a long way in following the "Be like Marvel" philosophy that producer/screenwriter Simon Kinberg expressed back in December after he signed a three-year deal with Fox, and the timeline would probably work. As of now everything is being kept hush-hush, however.
Also getting new dates from Fox are Taken 3 (January 9, 2015), Matthew Vaughn's The Secret Service (which was shifted from March 6, 2015 to October 24, 2014), Frankenstein starring Daniel Radcliffe and James McAvoy (which was pushed from January 16, 2015 to October 2, 2015) and an untitled Vince Vaughn movie (which has shifted from October 24, 2015 to March 6, 2015).
