Remember in high school when your class buried a time capsule in the ground, hoping that in 20 years or so, some students would dig it up and laugh/marvel at the quaintness of the past? Well, consider Screen Rant’s recently-published set visit from “The New Mutants” as one of those time capsules. The set visit occurred in 2017, during production, and is now being presented in 2020, as the superhero film is finally hitting theaters this spring. And honestly, it’s amazing to see comments from director Josh Boone that allude to a film with so much promise, just mere months before the wheels would fall off and the film would be put on the shelf for years.
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For those that might have forgotten, “The New Mutants” is the last vestige of the Fox/X-Men film universe that was supposed to be released in April 2018. The film focuses on a young group of mutants that find themselves in an asylum of sorts, where something isn’t right. They’re then haunted by supernatural forces, as they have to figure out how to escape. That sounds pretty interesting, right? Well, according to Josh Boone, the director of the film, the idea for a superhero/teen horror film came after Fox had some hits with “Deadpool” and “Logan.”
“It’s funny man, they’re so emboldened by ‘Deadpool’ and ‘Logan’ and that they really let us – I can’t believe they’re letting us make this movie,” said Boone. “If they knew all the stuff in this, I’m still like ‘Do they know how fucked up this movie is?’”
READ MORE: ‘The New Mutants’ Trailer: Fox’s Leftover Marvel Horror Is Finally Coming Of Age
In fact, the filmmaker said that a few scenes he showed people made them weep (apparently from fear, not from the lack of quality) and it made him wonder if the film “is going to make people cry?”
The director also revealed that the original story for the film would have taken place in the ‘80s and followed the timeline set forth in “X-Men: Apocalypse,” with Professor X (James McAvoy) making an appearance. Clearly, things changed, and thankfully, this connection was avoided.
Obviously, when you read interviews from set-visits, they’re always pretty hyperbolic. While on set, the production feels great and everyone wants to appear completely happy and excited about what they’re working on.
Now, in the case of “New Mutants,” we know that the drama that hit the film happened after filming ended, with Fox ordering massive rewrites and a potential overhaul in reshoots. However, those plans were dashed when Disney bought Fox and the film is apparently getting released as it was originally intended, presumably in the “fucked up” version that Boone discusses above. This whole process delayed the release of the film from April 2018 to April 2020.
Post-production problems aside, including those massive delays that make the set visit for this film almost ancient (three years ago), “The New Mutants” is finally arriving in theaters on April 3 and we’ll just have to see if the superhero horror film was worth the wait.