On Friday the 13th of October, 2017, Fox released a trailer for a superhero movie called The New Mutants. It touted a release date of April 13, 2018. Fast forward over two years. On January 6, 2020, another trailer for the film will drop, this time touting an April 3, 2020 release date.
In that time, the tale of Josh Boone’s little X-Men spinoff, The New Mutants, has become a beacon of movie blog gossip. The prevailing, albeit it never officially confirmed, rumors are that Fox was initially happy with Boone’s first cut of the film, describing it as almost a young adult, creepy Breakfast Club meets One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Next with superheroes. However, this coincided with the uber-success of another film starring several kids, It: Chapter One. Reportedly the studio wanted to follow-up on that success and retool New Mutants to lean a bit more into its horror elements. As a result, the film was delayed so that a huge bulk of it could be changed through reshoots. But, again, none of that was ever actually confirmed. It just became the prevailing theory because no one refuted it.
Along the way, its April 13, 2018 release date got moved to February 22, 2019. Then it was August 2, 2019. Then Fox was purchased by Disney. All of a sudden releasing a teen X-Men spinoff became slightly problematic considering there’s the whole Marvel Cinematic Universe thing to take into consideration. The stars of the film, such as Maisie Williams, went on record saying those reported horror reshoots never actually happened and the resulting confusion even sprouted rumors that the film could be pushed to streaming services like Disney+ or Hulu, especially when Variety reported Disney was “unimpressed” with the film and believed “it has limited box office potential.”
Now it appears all of that may be settled. Disney has since slapped an April 3, 2020 release date on the film and earlier this week, Boone took to his Instagram to promote a new trailer.
The language there, “supervised by,” seems a little odd and things only get weirder in the comments where a fan asked, “Will this be the og version of the movie you shot?” and Boone replied, “I wouldn’t be promoting it here if it wasn’t.”
Many have taken Boone’s reply to confirm that the original, unaltered version of The New Mutants is what fans will see in theaters this year. io9 sent multiple requests to Boone’s listed representatives for clarification and did not get a response. Disney, which now owns Fox, would not offer any comment, and we reached out to Boone on his Instagram as well. We’ll update if we are able to.
Still, all things considered, an original, unaltered version does seem to be what Boone is suggesting. For all we know, if those reshoots never actually happened, he went off and started on The Stand as the whole Disney and Fox thing worked itself out, and this is just the completion of the movie he originally wanted to make. Or maybe those reshoots did happen and he’s just embracing what they came up with. We honestly don’t know how much of what was rumored was real and what was not. How much the film has changed or not. Nor do we know about the other rumors, such as that any and all reference to X-Men characters and events were taken out of the film, so as not to conflict with Marvel Studios’ plans. We don’t know but we hope it’s all worth the wait.
The New Mutants, starring Anya Taylor-Joy, Maisie Williams, Charlie Heaton, Henry Zaga, Blu Hunt, and Alice Braga, will be out on April 3. For real this time.
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