I do think there is concern from some fans that this movie could potentially do further damage to the X-Men brand after the Dark Phoenix pretty much embarrassingly bombed. Another black eye for the brand commercially (and possibly critically) could further make Marvel gun shy about trying their hand at Mutants. So in their view, it doesn’t make sense for Disney to take a risk on releasing a troubled movie in theaters when the smarter, less expensive decision would be to just release it on a streaming platform.
Not to mention, the movie has delayed so much it’s become kind of a running gag in online circles that this movie is only going keep getting delayed and never actually is going to get released.
These concerns are understandable, but the reality is as soon as the Fox merger went through the question as to whether the movie was going to be a hit or not became quite irrelevant because as others have pointed out before: Marvel Studios was never going to make a sequel to this and even if this movie flops it won’t really impact the timetable for Marvel to reboot the Mutants since they were always going wait a while.
Whatever happens with New Mutants — whether it bombs or becomes a modest success it won’t really do any damage to the brand at all. Unlike DP this movie was much cheaper to make and they definitely made the right move not to do reshoots in order to avoid unnecessarily inflating the budget. This movie will be released, and then promptly forgotten about. If it’s good, then it’s good if it’s bad the it’s bad — however regardless of how the movie does it won’t affect the MCU’s ability to do the Mutants one way or the other. Disney won’t do much promotion for this movie, and the movie will be nothing more than a blip in most people’s radar at the end of the day. Those movie was always going to be more niche than DP was, it’s much cheaper to make and as long as they don’t spend any more money on reshoots this movie there’s a chance this movie can be profitable.