20th Century Studios
THE NEW MUTANTS
Starring Maisie Williams (Rahne Sinclair / Wolfsbane), Anya Taylor-Joy (Illyana Rasputen / Magik), Charlie Heaton (Sam Guthrie / Cannonball), Alice Braga (Cecilia Reyes), Blu Hunt (Dani Moonstar), and Henry Zaga (Roberto de Costa)
Directed by Josh Boone
Produced by Karen Rosenfelt, Simon Kinberg, and Lauren Shuler Donner
Written by Josh Boone and Knate Lee
Music By Mark Snow
Distributed by 20th Century Fox via The Walt Disney Company
Run Time: 1 hour and 34 minutes
World Premier: August 28, 2020, in select theaters during the Coronavirus Pandemic
Opening Weekend Box Office: $7 million (United States where only 62% of theaters were open and those theaters were running at 25%-50% seating capacity)
Worldwide Box Office: $ 49 million
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 35%
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Fun The New Mutants Facts
The New Mutants is based on The Demon Bear Saga which was published in New Mutants #18-20 in 1984.The story was written by celebrated X-Men scribe Chris Claremont and illustrated by Bill Sienkiewicz. The comic book story was celebrated at the time for its mature themes and horror elements.
Director Josh Boone was a big fan of Marvel’s Demon Bear Saga and he pushed hard to get an adaptation of the story green-lit by Fox. The New Mutants was initially developed to expand the Fox X-Men Universe, taking place three years after X-Men: Apocalypse. James McAvoy was originally scheduled to appear in the film in a reprisal of his role as Charles Xavier / Professor X, but this did not come to be.
The New Mutants filmed from July of 2017 through September of 2017.
On December 17, 2017, The Walt Disney Company announced that it had agreed on a deal with 20th Century Fox that would see Disney acquire Fox’s television and film divisions, among other things. The historic deal was for a reported $54 billion and promised to bring Deadpool, The X-Men, and The Fantastic Four (and The New Mutants) into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
In early-2018, Fox announced that The New Mutants would be delayed from its originally announced theatrical release date of April 13, 2018, and moved to February 22, 2019. This was done to allow for extensive re-shoots, but these re-shoots were themselves delayed. In the Spring of 2018, Fox delayed the release again, moving it to August 2, 2019.
Connected Theater
On July 27, 2018, Fox shareholders unanimously approved Disney’s acquisition, and the deal was finalized on March 20, 2019. Disney CEO Bob Iger confirmed that films that had already been made by Fox (such as The New Mutants) would still receive theatrical releases.
In the Spring of 2019, The Walt Disney Company announced that the release of The New Mutants had been pushed back to April 3, 2020. In the Summer, it was reported that Disney was “unimpressed” with the Fox cut of The New Mutants. Most references to previous X-Men films were removed, though select ties to 2017’s Logan remained.
On January 6, 2020: The Walt Disney Company released an official trailer for Josh Boone’s The New Mutants and confirmed that the film would not be set within the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Josh Boone announced that the film was “finished” on March 7, 2020, and revealed that no reshoots had ever commenced, but that “75%” of the film had been edited in some way.
Due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 Coronavirus Pandemic in the Spring of 2020, The New Mutants was ultimately moved to its August 28, 2020, theatrical release.
Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, The New Mutants was the only comic book movie released in 2020, as Marvel Studios delayed the previously scheduled release of films such as Black Widow and Eternals. The New Mutants, in a restricted market, only grossed $49 million, making it the lowest-grossing X-Men film of all-time and a box office bomb. The New Mutants was released some three years after shooting concluded.
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My The New Mutants Review
I enjoyed The New Mutants for what it was. It wasn’t the worst Fox X-Men film for me, but it wasn’t in the upper echelon either. I picked the film up on Blu-ray on Black Friday of 2020 and gave it a watch. There were some good scares, some great effects, some horrific imagery, and some cool characters were brought to life!
I especially loved the callbacks to The Demon Bear storyline from the comics and loved seeing The Demon Bear in live action! My favorite character from the film was easily Rahne / Wolfsbane and her lesbian relationship with Dani Moonstar was executed tastefully and I enjoyed their love story a lot. I also thought Anya Taylor-Joy was good as Magik, if not a tad too bitchy at times. The execution of Lockheed was also well done, and it was fun to see Kitty Pryde’s little alien dragon in live action!
I also really liked the twist that Dani Moonstar was one of Laura’s escaped genetically-engineered mutant children, as seen in Logan, though this little detail was also bittersweet due to the fact that it set up what could have been a really fantastic sequel with Daphne Keen potentially reprising her role as Laura / X-23 and joining Magik, Mirage, Wolfsbane, Sunspot, and Cannonball on-screen, but with the Disney acquisition and the subsequent poor financial and critical performances of both The New Mutants and Dark Phoenix, I knew that this would never come to be.
The New Mutants marked the end of an era within the comic book movie industry for it was the end of the Fox Marvel legacy which included 13 X-Men films over the course of 20-years, and arguably kick-started the success of big-budget Marvel films in the modern era, and for all of its flaws, gave us some all-time great genre films such as Deadpool, Logan, Deadpool 2, X-Men: Days of Future Past, X-Men: First Class, and X2: X-Men United.
The New Mutants wasn’t a great film, but it was different in some fun ways, and as a general fan of werewolves, I loved seeing the Wolfsbane character brought to life as she was! Maisie Williams was really great and there was a decent amount of suspense in this movie. It could have been longer, and there could have been more gore, but ultimately, this movie probably deserved better in terms of marketing and whatnot. There are worse ways to spend 90-minutes, especially when it comes to movie watching.
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Highlights of The New Mutants:
Maisie Williams as Wolfsbane
Blu Hunt as Dani Moonstar
Chemistry between Blu Hunt and Maisie Williams
The Demon Bear!
Anya Taylor-Joy as Magik
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Notable MCU Concepts and Characters Introduced:
New Mutants is a part of the Fox X-Men Universe, so it is therefore part of a Universe of characters that are rumored to be set to be formally introduced in Marvel Studios’ upcoming film Deadpool 3.
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