According to costar Alice Braga, there weren’t any major on-set rewrites or reshoots during production on The New Mutants. There are few movies coming out this year that are as big a question mark as Josh Boone’s long-delayed adaptation of The New Mutants comic books. The final X-Men film completed before Disney purchased Fox, New Mutants was shot in mid-2017 and originally scheduled to open the following spring. However, shortly after The New Mutants trailer was released, Fox delayed the film, supposedly to carry out reshoots that would bring it closer to director Josh Boone’s original horror movie pitch.
In the end, those reshoots never happened and New Mutants was pushed back a few more times before finally settling on its current April 2020 date. For fair reason, most people had a hard time believing the film would stick to this date either, at least until Disney finally released a fresh New Mutants trailer at the beginning of this month. But for all the holdups it’s had to endure since it finished production, it sounds like shooting on The New Mutants was anything but a nightmare to get through.
Braga, who plays Dr. Cecilia Reyes in The New Mutants, spoke to Screen Rant during our set visit in August 2017 about what production was like on the movie. According to her, Boone and his co-writer, Knate Lee, were fully prepared and ready to go as soon as production got started, resulting in very few rewrites or reshoots on-set. This, in turn, allowed them to focus on nailing the sense of atmosphere they were going for while shooting at the Medfield State Hospital in Massachusetts (a location that was also used in Martin Scorsese’s 2010 mystery-thriller Shutter Island). You can check out her full quote below.
For all its post-production delays and reports of reshoots, there’s never been any indication production on The New Mutants was equally tumultuous. Braga emphasized as much during SR’s interview with her, calling Boone “well prepared” and noting he used his storyboards “as a guide for set, so on set he knows everything, it’s not something he’s still developing.” What’s odd is Fox’s planned reshoots were long posited as being something Boone wanted to bring the movie closer to his original vision. More recently, though, Boone indicated he made the version of The New Mutants he intended to, saying he “wouldn’t be promoting” the project if Disney wasn’t releasing his initial cut.
“Josh prepared so much, him and Knate [Lee], beforehand, you know, about the script and all that, so there’s not much rewrites happening. Like, there’s more creating the environment on set and the energy on set. The location is so amazing, they shot Shutter Island here, the Scorcese film, and you can feel it….”
After all the delays, it would be great if The New Mutants got its happy ending and became a success, both critically and at the box office. Its horror approach (the trailer footage has been likened to Nightmare on Elm Street and The Shining, but with mutants) certainly makes it one of the more interesting superhero movies opening in 2020. At the very least, things working out for The New Mutants would just go to prove why studies are better off sticking with a creative vision once they’ve committed to it, rather than trying to change directions after the fact.
- New Mutants Release Date: 2020-08-28
