Director Josh Boone says the New Mutants movie heading to theaters is his original vision for the X-Men spinoff and not a revamped version. Prior to Disney’s purchase of Fox back in March, the latter studio had a pair of unreleased X-Men films in the pipeline. The first of them, X-Men: Dark Phoenix, opened in theaters back in June, but ended up becoming a critical and commercial misfire. Elsewhere, Boone’s New Mutants spinoff had already been delayed a couple times from its original 2018 window before Disney pushed it back again to April 2020.
Adapted from the comic book IP created by Chris Claremont and Bob McLeod, New Mutants revolves around a group of young mutants trying to escape the secret facility where they’re being held captive. Boone described his original version of the film as a haunted house movie in the vein of The Shining, but that was before the numerous release date delays and reports of reshoots that’ve (as far as anyone knows) never happened. Then, this summer, it was reported Disney and Fox were test-screening a version of New Mutants that hewed closely to Boone’s initial pitch, minus the references to Fox’s X-Men universe. Now, Boone himself is confirming this version will be the one hitting theaters.
In an Instagram message posted earlier this month, Boone confirmed the long-awaited second New Mutants trailer will premiere online next week on Monday, January 6. Responding to one of his Instagram followers, he later affirmed the movie will adhere to his original version of the project, backing a previous scoop from The GWW’s KC Walsh. You can check out a screenshot of Boone’s comment (along with Walsh’s tweet on the subject) below.
For those who could use a quick recap: it was reported New Mutant’s producers (including, X-Men franchise overseer Simon Kinberg) and Fox leaned on Boone to bring the spinoff more in line with a typical Fox X-Men film during production, deviating from his original horror movie premise. However, the studio then went and cut together a pretty horror-centric New Mutants trailer in October 2017, in the hopes of tapping into the demand for more horror entertainment on the heels of IT’s box office success a month earlier. Following the trailer’s positive response, the studio made plans for Boone to carry out reshoots to bring New Mutants closer to what he had in mind from the very beginning. This resulted in the movie being delayed from April 2018 to February 2019 and then against to August 2019, prior to Disney’s purchase of Fox.
After all that hullabaloo, it’s nice to know Boone has (by the sound of things) regained creative control of New Mutants and is set to release a version of the film he’s pleased to have his name on. It’s not clear yet whether the movie will be made part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe or not, but it’s rumored to be a possibility now that its ties to the old X-Men franchise have been abandoned. But for anyone who’s been following the film’s development over the last few years, that’s probably a bit of a secondary concern; at this point, it will come as a relief to finally watch New Mutants and confirm it actually exists at all (be it good, bad, or something in-between).
Source: Josh Boone [via KC Walsh]
- New Mutants Release Date: 2020-08-28
