X-Men fans will likely never know what could have happened with The New Mutants if behind-the-scenes shakeups never happened, as director Josh Boone has been saying for years that the film was meant to kick off a trilogy of films, with Boone recently detailing what he had hoped to accomplish with the endeavor. While the debut film was set to explore a “rubber reality,” the second film would have been an alien invasion film while the third was planned as an adaptation of the “Inferno” storyline of X-Men comics, serving as a supernatural horror movie. The New Mutants is currently slated to hit theaters on August 28th.
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“So after I made [The] Fault [in Our Stars], I ran back to Fox and said, ‘You’ve gotta let me develop New Mutants,’” Boone shared with /Film. “[Co-writer] Knate [Lee] and I made them a comic book, which was like a PDF where we’d gone and taken frames from all these comics we love and strung them into a vision for what the series was going to be. The characters we chose were always the characters – we had plans, obviously, to bring in new characters in the next movie – the character of Warlock was featured in all the early drafts of the script, but it was so expensive that we weren’t able to do it. Basically, cutting him out of the narrative allowed us to make the film. So our plan was always to have Warlock come back in the next one and try to tell his story then.”
He continued, “They were all supposed to be kind of separate horror genre films: the first one’s like a rubber reality horror movie, the second one was supposed to be an alien invasion movie with Warlock, and then the third one was going to take all these elements from the X-Men crossover from the late ’80s and early ’90s called ‘Inferno’ to be a kind of supernatural, apocalyptic horror movie. That was the plan.”
The first trailer for the film debuted in the fall of 2017 and touted an April 2018 release date. Due to a number of complications and competing films, the film has yet to be released, with studio 20th Century Fox’s purchase by Disney also adding delays to the endeavor. At the time, the X-Men universe was operating parallel to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, though these franchises are expected to merge as they’re all under the same studio. However, Boone confirmed that he hasn’t had discussions with Disney about getting to make his planned sequels.
“I never had a conversation about it,” the filmmaker confessed. “I just can’t imagine that they’d ever had a conversation about that unless the movie did the business and had the demand for them to have that conversation. At the same time, too, if I was them, I’d want a clean break. Like I said, I can kind of step outside myself to talk about any of this stuff. But I imagine they’ll do their own thing, but certainly, the cast and I would love to go make another movie. If there’s the demand for it, I think that it’s something that we’ll end up having a conversation about. But to me, now, I’d just be thankful to get this one out so everybody can see it.”
Despite the excitement for The New Mutants, the coronavirus pandemic has seen theaters around the world largely closed since March, leaving some fans to doubt theaters will be open in time for the film’s release date, possibly resulting in more delays.
The New Mutants is currently slated to debut on August 28th.
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