Following the recent news that Split‘s Anya Taylor-Joy and Game of Thrones star Maisie Williams have been cast as Magik and Wolfsbane, respectively, in 20th Century Fox’s upcoming New Mutants movie, director Josh Boone has now shared some intriguing new details on his approach to the material and what fans can expect.
While speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Boone revealed this he’s planning to bring audiences a very different type of X-Men film than they’re used to seeing, describing his project as a “full-fledged horror movie.”
“We are making a full-fledged horror movie set within the X-Men universe. There are no costumes. There are no supervillains. We’re trying to do something very, very different.”
Though that “no costumes” part may upset some comic book purists, if you’ve read the source materiel by Chris Claremont and Bill Sienkiewicz, you’ll know that makes sense. The Demon Bear Saga is not at all like a lot of the other X-Men tales of the time, and Boone also acknowledges that the darker elements and themes of the somewhat disturbing story will inform his adaptation.
[It’s] a darker and more surreal and impressionistic X-Men series than we’d ever seen before. It felt like Stephen King meets John Hughes. We made a comic book with what our vision of the series would be. We love that Fox wants to make all these different X-Men spinoffs as drastically different as they can.
In addition to these details, EW mentions another couple of potential cast members. Apparently, Henry Zaga (Teen Wolf, 13 Reasons Why) is being lined up for the part of Sunspot, while “unconfirmed chatter” suggest that The Defenders actress Rosario Dawson might be in contention for an undisclosed role.
We’ll have to wait and see how those casting rumors shake out, but for now, be sure to let us know what you think of Boone’s plans for his New Mutants movie in the usual place.
