When writer/director Josh Boone was tasked to helm the “X-Men” spinoff movie “The New Mutants” for 20th Century Fox, it was extremely promising as the director was behind the romantic drama “The Fault In Our Stars” and had assembled an impressive cast (Anya Taylor-Joy, Maisie Williams, Charlie Heaton, Alice Braga, Henry Zaga, and Blu Hunt were among the main cast) to play a string of mutants that mostly hadn’t been explored on the big screen (Sunspot being recast after briefly appearing in “X-Men: Days of Future Past“)
Geek outlet The Direct recently spoke with the filmmaker, who described his experience making the “X-Men” offshoot as “traumatic” and “unfufilling” as the studio was more focused on the acquisition by Disney, as “New Mutants” suffered for it alongside the release happening when the pandemic hit (theaters were notably empty during this time or completely shut down).
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“It’s so hard because it was so traumatic. The studio was sold, and we hit a pandemic. The studio was sold during the shooting, and then the pandemic happened when they decided to release it. And it just was such a, I had a wonderful time. I love the cast so much, but making that…It took so many years, and it was so unfulfilling, ultimately. We didn’t really get to make the movie we wanted to make. We made half the movie we wanted to make. And the release was so compromised by the pandemic… I’d rather just never do it again, just to be honest,” Boone told The Direct of his experience surrounding making and releasing “The New Mutants.”
Some of those plans for the movie were teeing up a sequel and they were trying to get “Mad Men” actor Jon Hamm to play Mister Sinister (one of the major villains from the comic books) for a post-credit scene (Hamm may have very well played the villain of Channing Tatum‘s “Gambit” movie, too, and has expressed an interested to play the baddie for the MCU). Sinister’s Essex Corp. was teased and would show up at the end of Bryan Singer‘s “X-Men: Apocalypse,” cleaning up the aftermath of Wolverine’s brutal attack at the Weapon X facility. So, there had been major plans for Sinister across the franchise, but that ultimately didn’t happen.
Sinister wasn’t the only idea that got scrapped. Boone previously confirmed to EW that Antonio Banderas was once in talks to play Emmanuel da Costa, the father of Zaga’s Sunspot, but he also failed to join the superhero horror flick ultimately. He also wanted a larger roster, as the alien team member Warlock and the Vietnamese mutant character Karma were wanted, but didn’t make the cut.
“Karma was always going to be the villain in the second movie that would be absorbed into the group by the end,” Boone told Entertainment Weekly in 2020 about some of those scrapped ideas for the first installment and his possible sequel. “We had always wanted to bring Karma and Warlock into the second one when we couldn’t do it in the first one.”
Ultimately, “The New Mutants” came and went when released in 2020 (only mustering $49 million total at the global box office) without much fanfare (not unlike what happened with Simon Kinberg‘s “Dark Phoenix“). Flash forward to 2025, and Marvel Studios has already released the billion-dollar hit “Deadpool & Wolverine” and aims to reboot the “X-Men” with director Jake Schreier (“Thunderbolts”) attached to oversee the next era of the franchise in the MCU, as the studio is gearing up for The Mutant Saga.
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