With its increasingly absurd number of delays, “The New Mutants,” fast becoming the “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote” of superhero movies, has again returned to prove that it actually exists. A large push at this year’s virtual edition of the San Diego Comic-Con that included a screening of the opening few minutes. The film appears to be sticking to its 28 August theatrical release and though after 3 years of delays it’s clear that no one believes that, it feels like something of a foolhardy position to take, considering both that this date has been in place for two months now, and the reality of what coronavirus means for blockbuster releases, even at the rest of Disney and other major studios.
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Ahead of the Comic-Con at Home panels, in an interview with Entertainment Tonight Boone talked through the uncertainty surrounding the release as well as previous plans for the film, which included the alien character Warlock: “Actually, the original scripts for this had Warlock in it, and we had to take Warlock out to be able to make the movie because he was so expensive. But we always had lined up for Cypher, Karma, and Warlock.” With their outlandish design, Warlock most certainly would’ve been an entirely CGI character, so the cut is understandable.
In the same interview, it was revealed that with Warlock cut from the film he would return for a sequel, which would then lead into an adaptation of the X-Men crossover ‘Inferno’ for the would-be trilogy. “Basically, cutting him out of the narrative allowed us to make the film. So our plan was always to have Warlock come back in the next one and try to tell his story then.”
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“They were all supposed to be kind of separate horror genre films: the first one’s like a rubber reality horror movie, the second one was supposed to be an alien invasion movie with Warlock, and then the third one was going to take all these elements from the X-Men crossover from the late ‘80s and early ‘90s called ‘Inferno’ to be a kind of supernatural, apocalyptic horror movie. That was the plan.”
Sounds exciting, considering the particular wildness of that X-Men event comic, but even without the almost comical production woes of “New Mutants” this sadly seems unlikely, now that the property has now been bought and will likely be rebooted by Disney and Marvel Studios.
READ MORE: Josh Boone Still Has Hope That ‘New Mutants’ Is The First Film In A Trilogy
Though other than that theatrical release date the plan for New Mutants is still somewhat unclear, in an interview with Comicbook.com, Boone spoke fairly enthusiastically about the idea of releasing the film on PVOD or Disney+. “If we can do it in theaters that’s always my first choice. But like Disney came to me and said they were gonna stream it I’d be like awesome. Then everybody can watch it. It’d be great”. For now, all there is to do is wait and see, and perhaps place bets on whether the August 28 release date holds.