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20th Century Fox has done quite well for themselves in the Marvel movie department over the last 20 years or so. The X-Men franchise and its spin-off films, including the recent heavy hitters Logan and Deadpool, paved the way for superhero cinema long before anyone cooked up the concept of a shared cinematic universe. But with so many superhero movies clogging up release date calendars and production pipelines, it's getting increasingly difficult for each project to have a fresh approach.

Stacey Snider, chairman and CEO of 20th Century Fox, knows this full well. It was the topic of conversation in a recent interview with Variety. Big changes are taking place in the movie-making industry, changes which Snider seems to be both aware of and prepared for; be sure to read Variety's full write-up for the inside story. Concerning one upcoming Fox/Marvel production, New Mutants, which is due out April 13, 2018, Snider offered some interesting insight into how she expects this film to stand out from the pack.

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Image via Marvel Comics

Here's how Snider responded when asked about combating superhero movie fatigue:

If we’re going to make a superhero movie, we have to ask ourselves: “What’s our version? What’s a Fox Marvel film? When you look at films like “Deadpool” or “Logan” or the upcoming “New Mutants,” you’ll see they have their own personality. Great effort has been put into making sure they’re differentiated.

 

 

“New Mutants” is about these teenagers who are just coming into their powers. It’s like watching mutants go through adolescence and they have no impulse control, so they’re dangerous. The only solution is to put them in a “Breakfast Club” detention/“Cuckoo’s Nest” institutional setting. It protects the people on the outside, but it’s strange and combustible inside. The genre is like a haunted-house movie with a bunch of hormonal teenagers. We haven’t seen it as a superhero movie whose genre is more like “The Shining” than “we’re teenagers let’s save the world.”

While I for one am ready to see a superhero film that strives to separate itself from the many, many "save the world" rehashes, we have seen versions of superheroes struggling with their burgeoning powers before, just not on the big screen. 20th Century Fox Television's Legion has done this better than anything that's come before it, while the TV production wing's upcoming Fox show The Gifted will attempt to bring that aesthetic to network television. Perhaps these projects were intended to test the waters to see how audiences would respond to a slightly off-kilter superhero story, or perhaps it's merely coincidence. Either way, I'm excited to see the new take described for New Mutants.

How do you feel about the Breakfast Club-meets-Cuckoo's Nest description for New Mutants? Be sure to let us know in the comments!

And for more on New Mutants, be sure to visit these links:

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Image via Marvel Comics