Here's the latest news: The merger (which originally looked like it was going to take more than a year to complete) looks like
it will be done by January of next year.
As such, Fox has shuffled around the dates of its upcoming movies; some speculate that this is at least partly so that they don't compete with Disney films.
Alita: Battle Angel has been moved from Christmas to Feb. 14, and
Dark Pheonix has been moved to Jun. 7 (its second shuffling). Meanwhile,
Alita's December date has been taken by a bizarre-sounding PG-13
Deadpool 2 re-edit. (These developments were discussed a bit in the "
X-Men Continuity Series" thread, pgs. 31 and 32.)
Now, the latest news is that
Dark Pheonix will probably be the first Fox movie released under the Disney regime.
The above Screen Rant article is intriguing, but I think it's inaccurate on several points.
Even if Disney technically owns Fox by the time
Dark Phoenix is released, I can't imagine that they would rebrand the end of the previous X-Men continuity as being part of the current MCU. That would just cause needless confusion.
When they start fresh with a reboot (and they will reboot), the new X-Men movies will have the MCU branding.
Dark Phoenix (and
New Mutants, coming Aug. 2) will likely have the current Fox/Marvel branding so that it's clear that this is part of the old continuity. I hope these movies are good, but if they're bad (or even if they just remind people too much of the X-Men movies' messy timeline), the last thing Kevin Feige would want people to think is that this is the first of his new X-Men films.
I think it's a bit funny that the Screen Rant author suggests this movie might open with a Disney castle logo. None of the other live-action superhero movies have started with this (probably for fear of teenagers thinking it's lame), so why would they start now, especially when this looks to be a pretty dark, non-Disney-esque film?
I also don't think Disney/Marvel wants to have two competing X-Men franchises going at the same time. These movies are getting released because a bunch of money has already been spent on making them, but Feige and co. are going to want to move on as quickly as possible. They may even go as far as cancelling the TV series
The Gifted and
Legion; despite all the buzz around these shows, they'll likely be considered remnants of the past the way
Spectacular Spider-Man and
Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes were.
The real question about branding, and a question I have yet to hear answered in any news article on this subject, is: Who gets the Fox logo? After all, New Fox (containing many broadcast and cable channels) will continue to operate as a separate entity. Did Disney buy the library or also the name and logo? If the latter, expect
Dark Phoenix and
New Mutants to get a typical Fox opening logo. If not, there will probably just be a generic Marvel (non-MCU) logo.
(Sidebar: If Disney does get the Fox logo, expect them to add that to the beginning of
Star Wars: Episode IX in their ongoing attempt to win back disenfranchised fans. That's just good business sense.)
Anyway, sorry for once again dumping out the entire contents of my brain.