Fox has moved up the release date for Prometheus sequel Alien:  Covenant (see “Geek Film Casting Update”), and added several other geek films to its schedule, according to Variety.  Ridley Scott’s Alien:  Covenant, for which the first poster was released last week (via Twitter, below), will now premiere on May 19, 2017 (see “Best in Shows – Q2 2017”); it was originally scheduled for August 4. 

Fox also added two dates for unspecified Marvel films, and eliminated one.  Untitled Marvel films are now scheduled for November 2, 2018 and February 14, 2019, while a Marvel film scheduled for October 6, 2017 has been pulled off the schedule in favor of Kingsman 2, which was moved back from a planned June 16, 2017 release date.  Fox has the rights to Marvel properties X-Men (and related properties, such as New Mutants, Deadpool and Gambit) and Fantastic Four. 

Recent changes to the studio’s plans for its X-Men films (see “Changes Expected for X-Men Movies”) may be behind the scheduling shifts.

And in what could be the biggest box office impact of all of Fox’s scheduling moves, the studio reserved December 21, 2018 for an unnamed film from James Cameron’s Lightstorm Entertainment, widely speculated to be the sequel to Avatar.  Cameron indicated at CinemaCon in April that the first of four Avatar sequels would premiere in December 2018 (see “Cameron Delays, Expands ‘Avatar’ Sequels”).