The New Mutants Director Confirms Antonio Banderas Was Cast as Sequel Villain

The New Mutants will go down as one of the most interesting cases of "what could have been" in all of the superhero movie genre. The film is coming out in theaters next month, which most people believed wouldn't ever happen, but there's an entire potential franchise probably in the trash can thanks to Disney's purchase of Fox. Fans loved the horror vibes of the first New Mutants trailer, and felt like there could be a really interesting set of films on the way. As it turns out, director Josh Boone had the same idea, as he pitched and planned an entire trilogy of films, with Antonio Banderas popping up in the second movie as one of its villains.

During an interview with EW, Boone explained that Banderas had already been cast for the sequel, and he was going to appear in a post-credits scene of the first movie to set up the new story. However, because of the merger, the scene was never shot.

"It was intentional that we didn't shoot it," Boone said. "We had always planned to have a tag at the end of the movie that introduced the villain for the next movie. We even had an actor cast, but because of the merger and because Marvel owns X-Men now and is going to do their own thing, there was no reason to go shoot it."

Banderas was going to play Emmanuel da Costa, father of Henry Zaga's Roberto, aka Sunspot. The sequel would've seen the main characters travel to Brazil to save Roberto's mother from her father.

"We always intended to do New Mutants: Brazil as the second movie," Boone explained.

The New Mutants: Brazil was also supposed to introduce popular comic characters Karma and Warlock. The latter was rumored to be added to the first film in reshoots, but the intention was always to bring him in during movie two.

"Karma was always going to be the villain in the second movie that would be absorbed into the group by the end," Boone said. "We had always wanted to bring Karma and Warlock into the second one when we couldn't do it in the first one. For us, we wanted that initial core team [for the first movie]. We just couldn't swap out Illyana. We felt like there was no reason to do [the movie] if we couldn't bring that character to life in the first one. Swapping out for someone like Magma. I don't feel fits very well in the kind of movie we were gonna make. I've got Bobby already. We tried to make a team that made sense."

Are you looking forward to seeing The New Mutants next month? Do you think there's any chance we get a sequel? Let us know in the comments!

The New Mutants arrives in theaters on April 3rd.