Up until yesterday’s release of a brand new trailer, you’d be forgiven for forgetting that The New Mutants even existed. Disney’s acquisition of Fox left the project in a state of limbo, with many speculating that the studio’s final X-Men movie may never even see the light of day. Josh Boone’s horror-tinged comic book flick was constantly plagued by setbacks and was originally set to hit theaters in April 2018 before the Disney/Fox deal saw it pushed back by two full years.
Not only is The New Mutants finally being released in April though, but fans seemed genuinely impressed with how good the latest footage was, with interest in the mutant spinoff now starting to pick up once again. And with little direct competition at the box office during the movie’s opening weekend, if it turns out to be a success, then Disney and Marvel could have yet another big comic book franchise on their hands.
It’d previously been reported that Disney ordered all references to Fox’s X-Men movies to be removed from The New Mutants now that the vast majority of the characters are under the Marvel Studios banner, with an eye to making them a part of Marvel Cinematic Universe canon should it end up being a hit. And it seems that’s still the plan.
Sources close to We Got This Covered – the same ones who tipped us off on comic book movie-related happenings like Viola Davis’ return for The Suicide Squad, Daniel Radcliffe being eyed for Moon Knight and the development of a Ms. Marvel show on Disney Plus well before they were all confirmed – have told us that Kevin Feige has seen the theatrical cut of The New Mutants and walked away quite impressed, so much so that if it does well at the box office, then the Marvel Studios head wants to bring them into the MCU at some point in the future.
And while it obviously remains to be seen if this will indeed happen, it could go some way to explaining why there was so much talk about the reshoots making The New Mutants R-rated, only for director Josh Boone to confirm that the final cut will be PG-13, while maintaining that it represents his original vision for the movie. In any case, with the MCU only getting bigger and bigger, if fans and critics turn The New Mutants into a bona-fide hit, then there’s every chance that any potential sequels will be absorbed into the wider shared universe down the line. For now, though, it seems that it’s something that Feige definitely wants to do.
