At long last, the Fox superhero movie The New Mutants is coming to streaming. But probably not where you think. The long-delayed X-Men spinoff was filmed all the way back in 2017, but suffered numerous delays in post-production as 20th Century Fox initially planned to conduct a round of reshoots to up the scare factor of the horror-tinged spinoff. Set in the X-Men universe of movies, The New Mutants revolves around a group of teenagers with mutant abilities who find themselves locked in a hospital where they’re told they’ll be trained to harness their new powers.
Directed by Josh Boone, the film has a robust ensemble cast that includes Maisie Williams, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Heaton, and Blu Hunt, but it got caught up in Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox. Indeed, when Disney started negotiating to acquire Fox, the reshoots plan for New Mutants was put on hold, and the film was not released. Even after Disney bought Fox, the Mouse House had to pore over all of Fox’s unreleased films and decide what to do with The New Mutants, a film that posed a problem.
This X-Men spinoff was originally supposed to launch a new franchise, but Disney wanted to start from scratch with the X-Men under Marvel Studios’ purview. Eventually The New Mutants was released exclusively in theaters on August 28, 2020, right in the middle of the pandemic, where it amassed a paltry $46.9 million at the worldwide box office.
And now The New Mutants is finally coming to streaming… on HBO Max. Indeed, while Disney now owns Fox, The New Mutants is tied up in previous licensing contracts that were signed before Fox’s sale to Disney. Those contracts guaranteed a theatrical release for the film, which is why it hit theaters last summer instead of going straight to Hulu or Disney+ like many speculated. And now, it appears as though the film’s pay-cable debut is promised to HBO, which is why it will be streaming on HBO Max on April 10th at 8pm EST (the same time it airs on HBO).
The New Mutants will not always be streaming on HBO Max – the film will undoubtedly leave HBO in a few months after its license expires – but it’s fascinating to see that’s where it’ll be making it streaming debut. Disney+ recently has been adding library 20th Century Fox superhero titles like The Wolverine and X-Men: Days of Future Past, but not in perpetuity like the MCU movies – The Wolverine was streaming for a bit, but then left.
This is yet another example of why, in the age of streaming, physical media is really the only way to truly control your library. Streaming deals are complicated and licensing deals are limited, which is why a Fox superhero movie like The New Mutants is airing on HBO and streaming on HBO Max well before it heads to something like Disney+. Right now, we don’t even know when The New Mutants could be added to Disney+ at the earliest, so if you’ve been waiting to finally stream this oddity of a Fox X-Men movie, mark your calendars for April 10th and fire up HBO or HBO Max.