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The New Mutants was supposed to open this past April before it got kicked to February 2019 and then all the way back to August 2019. Back in March, we reported that the film was undergoing reshoots to make the film straight horror, and that we heard that a sizeable percentage of the movie is being reshot. However, when Steve Weintraub spoke to producer Simon Kinberg yesterday for Dark Phoenix, Kinberg revealed that those reshoots are still to come.

As for the direction those reshoots will take the movie in terms of rating, that’s still being decided. According to Kinberg, there’s no mandate on what the rating must be, and they’re waiting to see what kind of film director Josh Boone delivers:

“It’s the kind of movie that could go R, or it could be a hard PG-13. As I was saying before in terms of subgenres or the genre, it is obviously teased as a horror film, and most horror films these days are R-rated, but it stars a very young cast, so we’ll see. It really is what the movie wants to be. The studio is open to either rating… Traditionally, superhero movies are PG-13 other than Logan and the Deadpool movies, and generally, horror films are R-rated, so we’ll see where this one falls. It is a very scary, edgy movie.”

Personally, I think they’d be better off going for the R-rated horror film than just another PG-13 superhero movie. Fox has had great success with their R-rated, genre-bending superhero films, and I’m sure they’d be able to market this effectively. Also, if it’s just PG-13, then what makes The New Mutants significantly different than “The X-Men, but slightly scary”? Better to make a bold decision and swing for a horror film with superhero undertones than go for a superhero movie with horror undertones.

The New Mutants opens August 2, 2019 and stars Anya Taylor-Joy, Maisie Williams, Alice Braga, Charlie Heaton, and Henry Zaga.