Having spent so long stuck in cinematic purgatory, The New Mutants holds the unique distinction of being both the last X-Men movie from Fox and technically the first from Disney, with the recently-rebranded 20th Century Studios handling distribution. The horror-tinged spinoff is currently scheduled to arrive at the end of next month, but given how many times the project has been delayed already, a lot of fans will believe it when they finally get to see it for themselves.
After Disney completed their takeover of Fox while The New Mutants was still in stasis, it was reported that any references to the X-Men franchise were ordered to be removed, although director Josh Boone maintains that the version set to hit theaters will be his intended cut of the movie. There had also been widespread speculation that the cursed film’s new owners would simply cut their losses and release it straight to digital, which Boone recently debunked after revealing that the comic book adaptation is contractually obligated to screen in cinemas.
In a recent interview, the filmmaker also offered up some new details about how The New Mutants was set to connect to the main X-Men timeline, and unsurprisingly, it would have involved a cameo or two. The early drafts of the script were set in the 1980s and Alexandra Shipp’s version of Storm that debuted in Apocalypse was set for a major role before the studio decided that they didn’t want to add any more period pieces to their mutant lineup.
“We had early drafts that were supposed to be in the same timeline as Apocalypse, so it was originally going to be set in the 80s. Originally, Professor X and Storm were in it, and Storm very much played the Alice Braga role. Over the course of months, a new studio head came in, they said they didn’t want any X-Men movies to take place in the past anymore, as if that was the reason that Apocalypse was bad.”
Alice Braga is playing Dr. Cecilia Reyes in The New Mutants, and while little is known about her role so far, it doesn’t seem like a like-for-like comparison with a major X-Men character like Storm, so those early drafts must have been markedly different from the movie that may or may not finally escape into the world in just a matter of weeks.
