Fox is moving forward with the X-Men spinoff, The New Mutants, and has hired The Fault in Our Stars director Josh Boone to helm the picture. According to Deadline, Boone will co-write the screenplay with Knate Gwaltney (Kidnap), and Simon Kingberg and Lauren Shuler Donner, the stewards of the X-Men movie franchise, will produce.
I'm honestly a little surprised that it's taken this long for Fox to move forward on an X-Men spinoff that isn't based on a solo character. I understand if they didn't want to pull focus from the current X-Men movies, but now that Apocalypse is looking more and more like the end of a chapter for the franchise, I'm wondering if the studio is now going to seriously branch out and start launching other teams. The X-Men comics have no shortage of spinoff teams, and this could be Fox's response to Marvel and Warner Bros/DC's crossover films.
The New Mutants was created by Chris Claremont and Bob McLeod, and first appeared in December 1982. According to Wikipedia, the original team consisted of Cannonball, Sunspot, Wolfsbane, Karma, Dani Moonstar, and Professor X. Since then, the team—like all other X groups, has had a rotating roster, and it will be interesting to see which mutants Boone chooses to use.
Kinberg tells Deadline, “We’re so excited to explore this new part of the X-Men universe, and so excited to do it with Josh, who is uniquely suited to tell this story about young characters.” This makes me wonder about how a post-Apocalypse team will work out. It looks like the main X-Men franchise is going to lose its older actors and replace them with a younger cast, so I’m curious to see how they’ll have different tone since Deadline specifically states that New Mutants is a spinoff, not a continuation of the main X-Men movies. In other words, don't expect Cyclops (Tye Sheridan) and Jean Grey (Sophie Turner) to be main characters in New Mutants.
However Boone decides to proceed, don’t expect New Mutants anytime soon. Boone’s next film is The Vampire Chronicles, which is a reboot of the film franchise based on Anne Rice’s vampire novels (e.g. Interview with the Vampire). After that, he’s planning to move forward on The Stand, although I can see that one sticking around in development hell since Warner Bros. wants Stephen King’s novel to be broken into four movies.
Deadline reports that Marvel was eyeing Boone for Spider-Man, but I suspect he’s now out of the running since Marvel loathes Fox and I doubt the two would work together to see if Boone’s schedule could accommodate both films.
