Cancelled The New Mutants Sequel Would Have Included Karma and Warlock

As unlikely as it might seem, The New Mutants is only weeks away from release, that is assuming that the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus doesn’t delay it further. The film has been sitting on a shelf for years now but at one time would have been a new cornerstone for Fox’s Marvel offerings, with further plans for the future of the title. Co-writer and director Josh Boone has revealed in a new interview what some of his plans would have been for sequels to the film, including a title for the sequel and which of the other characters from the comics by Chris Claremont and Bill Sienkiewicz.

“Karma was always going to be the villain in the second movie that would be absorbed into the group by the end,” Boone tells Entertainment Weekly. “We had always wanted to bring Karma and Warlock into the second one when we couldn’t do it in the first one.”

Karma is a member of the New Mutants from the pages of Marvel Comics with psychic abilities, including the power to posses the minds of other people’s bodies; while Warlock is actually a “techno-organic” alien with shape shifting and extensive durability powers. Boone went on to detail why they didn’t appear in the first film, adding:

“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.”

Boone revealed even more details about what the sequel would have included, confirming that its title would have been New Mutants: Brazil, shifting focus to the South American home of Sunspot as he would attempt to reconnect with his mother. In addition, the director confirmed that each of the movies in his planned New Mutants trilogy would have all been horror movies, though different subgenres of horror movies with each entry.

Since the X-Men have now been absorbed by the Marvel Studios machine it seems unlikely that the planned sequels will see the light of day, but Boone remained optimistic that if the film performed well enough at the box office that there was a glimmer of hope.

“In our heart of hearts, we hope [The New Mutants] makes a bunch of money so that we can go make the second one,” ge said. “We’re all just bummed at everything that happened. Just the merger and everything else. It had nothing to do with us personally and had an impact on every single movie at Fox at the time.”

The New Mutants will be released on April 3.