New Mutants Director Debunks Reshoot Rumors

New Mutants director Josh Boone is debunking rumors that his film went through extensive changes during reshoots. In an interview with ComicBook.com during Comic-Con At Home, Boone made it clear that due to the Disney-Fox merger, New Mutants never even got the usual reshoots that most movies do. As Boone explained, “…because of the merger, we didn’t have the opportunity to do what really every movie does, which is do pick up shots or do reshoot a couple of things or shoot a couple of additional things. So really I was able to finish the movie with just what we shot on set.”

Check out the full exchange between ComicBook.com‘s Brandon Davis and New Mutants director Josh Boone, during our San Diego Comic-Con 2020 interview:

“Josh, this has been the most bizarre road to release, I think for any movie,” Brandon said, recounting the many delays with New Mutants’ release. “We’ve all been anticipating it, I can’t wait; have the delays… has the movie benefited from that? Have you taken any opportunities to add things to that?”

Josh Boone: “Well, I mean, because of the merger, we didn’t have the opportunity to do what really every movie does, which is do pick up shots or do reshoot a couple of things or shoot a couple of additional things. So really I was able to finish the movie with just what we shot on set. So the movie hasn’t changed that dramatically between before the merger and after the merger – it’s just gotten a little more fine-tuned. And now it has visual effects that are finished, which were sort of the big thing that was missing when the merger happened, that whole aspect of it shut down. So we only got to see kind of finished visual effects this year.”

That explanation backs up what the other stars of New Mutants (like Maisie Williams) have been saying for over a year now, which is that the rumored reshoots never happened. It was speculated that testing of the film and early marketing led the studio to want to tweak the tone and focus to a more horror-themed feature – one that could potentially launch a larger trilogy of X-Men horror films.

Rumors of the reshoots happening first hit the Internet in early 2019, when New Mutants co-creator Bill Sienkiewicz said in an interview that, “I think they’re doing some reshoots right now.” That offhand remark set off a fanbase that had been hungry for any progress on New Mutants‘ release, ever since the film was supposed to hit theaters in 2018.

Later reporting from industry insiders revealed what Boone said above: that New Mutants had been tested for audiences without fully completed visual effects. Now that those are in place, the finished footage seems to be a hit with fans.

Right now, New Mutants is holding on its late August release date. Though Marvel fans are chanting for Disney+ to be a backup option.