Rumors of The New Mutants’ death have been greatly exaggerated. The teen-centric X-Men spinoff first went into production all the way back in July 2017, and since that time there have been rumors that the tone was changed, that 20th Century Fox wanted significant reshoots, that A-list cameos were going to be added in post-production, and eventually that the movie wouldn’t even hit theaters at all and would instead be released on Hulu.
As it turns out, none of that was true. Or at least none of that turned out to be true. The New Mutants was indeed in a place of limbo for about a year when Disney was in the process of purchasing Fox and the film’s release date had been continually bumped back. After all, The New Mutants was originally conceived as the next step in a series of X-Men movies meant to build out Fox’s own Marvel universe, and now Disney had to figure out how/if New Mutants fit into its existing Marvel Cinematic Universe (you know, the one with The Avengers).
Well The New Mutants is now officially completed and hitting theaters (finally) on April 3rd, and no, those reshoots never happened. Speaking with EW, director and co-writer Josh Boone explained why:
“Everybody said we did reshoots! We’ve never done reshoots. And I’ll tell you this: if there hadn’t been a merger, I’m sure we would’ve done reshoots the same way every movie does pickups. We didn’t even do that because by the time the merger was done and everything was settled, everybody’s older.”
Indeed, the rumor at the time was that Boone initially pitched The New Mutants as a horror movie but Fox instead asked him to shoot the film more like a PG-13 thriller, but then the studio was rumored to have changed its mind and wanted reshoots to then amp up the horror and potentially move towards an R-rating. That never ended up happening, and the film is now being released as PG-13 for “violent content, some disturbing/bloody images, some strong language, thematic elements and suggestive material.”
Boone says he heard nothing from Disney or Fox for about a year as the merger was being finalized, so he moved on to making The Stand miniseries for CBS All Access. Disney eventually called the filmmaker up and asked if he wanted to return and finish the film, and he enthusiastically returned to finish up a cut that was already nearly complete:
"In the editing, we were probably 75 percent done," Boone explains. "We came back and finished it up. It took a couple months, and it was nice to be able to come back. Knate [Lee], my co-writer, and I, we hadn’t seen it in a year. We did a bunch of things here and there that we hadn’t thought about or noticed a year before.”
It’s a unique situation for a unique film, returning to an unfinished cut you haven’t worked on in a year, but it’s nice that Boone was able to see this thing through to the finish line. Maisie Williams—who has seen the finished film—says it’s exactly the movie they set out to make, and Boone has given this version his stamp of approval.
Whether The New Mutants will begin a new franchise under Disney/Marvel Studios’ purview or if the film will be essentially “burned off” like last year’s Dark Phoenix is unclear, but at the very least we’ll be seeing a vision that was overseen by the film’s architect from beginning to end. Without those additional reshoots.
For a complete look at Marvel’s upcoming slate of films, click here. And see below for Boone's sneak peek from when they finally locked the final cut of The New Mutants.