Twentieth Century’s The New Mutants has quite a tumultuous history. While the Josh Boone-directed X-Men spinoff is finally making its way to theaters on April 3rd, the Marvel comic book adaptation was nearly a casualty of Disney’s acquisition of Fox.
In fact, when it was originally pulled from release, there was a lot of finger-pointing that went on both behind the scenes and even publicly. There was confusion over a series of test screenings and the tone of the film, not to mention who was at fault. In the middle of it all were reports of reshoots, which I had shot down several times here on Bloody Disgusting and on social media.
In the end, it’s all moot – what’s arriving in theaters next month is all of Boone’s original footage.
“Everybody said we did reshoots! We’ve never done reshoots,” the director confirms to EW.
“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.”
This is music to my ears as we won’t have to suffer through years of superfans tweeting #ReleasetheBooneCut.
“The movie is exactly the movie we set out to make,” adds Maisie Williams, who stars as Rahne Sinclair, a.k.a. Wolfsbane. “I was nervous when they were talking about reshooting or re-editing that it was gonna be very different, but honestly, it’s exactly what we set out to do.”
Other New Mutants include Anya Taylor-Joy as Illyana Rasputin, also known as Magik; Charlie Heaton as Sam Guthrie, a.k.a. Cannonball; Henry Zaga as Roberto da Costa a.k.a Sunspot, a mutant with the ability to absorb and channel solar power; and Blu Hunt as Danielle Moonstar, the Native American telepath also known as “Mirage”.
In the film, “Five young mutants, just discovering their abilities while held in a secret facility against their will, fight to escape their past sins and save themselves.”
Boone also made it clear that The New Mutants is very much inspired by Dream Warriors.