The release of The New Mutants has lingered in limbo for years and now that Hollywood is effectively shut down for the foreseeable future, the Josh Boone movie will have to wait even longer. With once postponement after another, wires were bound to cross at one point or another; now, a popular visual effects magazine has unveiled a set of revealing photos from the film. After all, the movie was supposed to be out by now, long before the magazine in question went to press.
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In the latest issue of Cinefex, several high-quality stills were available from the film, giving fans their first looks at both Limbo itself as well as the monstrous Demon Bear — two items teased in the marketing so far though never being explicitly shown. The first shot includes Anya Taylor-Joy’s Magik as she steps through a portal into Limbo, the classic comics dimension the character has strong ties too.
According to Cinefex, Method Studios handled the majority of the Limbo visual effects, basing the environment on geometric bismuth crystals. As the photo’s caption in the magazine reads, “For shots of crystalline armor forming across Magik’s arm, effects artists flowed crystal simulations through digi-double geometry.
The next image features Magik facing off against Demon Bear in Limbo, with that geometric crystal environment in full display. Cinefex adds, “Visual effects supervisor Olivier Dumont created illusions both superheroic and supernatural, working with teams at Method Studios, DNEG, Zero VFX, MPC, and Cantina Creative. Special effects supervisor Mark Hawker provided practical gags and action props to support the director’s grounded “rubber reality” approach.
At one point, The New Mutants was set to debut on April 13, 2018 — a Friday the 13th, perfectly fitting for the spooky superhero outing. Three months ahead of its release, the movie was then pushed all the way back to February 22, 2019 and two months later, it was pushed even further back into 2019.
Before long, the 20th Century Fox and Disney merger added complications to the flick and work on the project halted entirely. After the merger was complete, Disney announced the movie would finally release on April 3, 2020 before eventually being removed from the schedule entirely due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
The New Mutants has yet to receive a new release date from Disney.
