The Real Truth About The New Mutants' Reshoots
The road of The New Mutants to the big screen has been a long, winding, and complicated one. One of Fox Studios' final productions before its acquisition by Disney, the flick was to be a part of the same universe as the late X-Men series; since its first trailer was dropped in October 2017, its release date has been pushed back a number of times, with reports citing differences between director Josh Boone and Fox over the tone of the film, and which characters were to be involved.
The situation didn't become any less complicated after the studio's purchase by Disney. The story of five young mutants being held in a mysterious, sinister facility from which they must find a way to escape had been pitched to the moviegoing public as more psychological horror flick than superhero film, and that — along with the jaw-dropping critical and commercial failure of Dark Phoenix, the last X-Men movie to be released by Fox — led many observers to believe that Disney might release the flick directly to streaming, or not at all. Even prior to the Mouse House taking over, there were reports that executives' dissatisfaction with the picture meant that up to 50% of the movie would need to be re-shot — and Disney's deafening silence on the whole matter since buying Fox seemed a pretty strong indication that the project might end up permanently shelved.
Then, amazingly, news broke in early 2020 that the flick would be released to theaters, after all — but what ended up happening with those reshoots, and exactly which version of The New Mutants are we going to get? Boone recently broke his silence on the matter, and as it turns out, his original vision for the film is the one we'll end up seeing.
The New Mutants reshoots never actually happened
As Boone disclosed to Entertainment Weekly, the reason for the endless speculation about exactly when and how The New Mutants' reshoots had taken place is because they never actually happened; even the pickup shoots typical of nearly every major studio production didn't take place, a situation Boone blames on the Disney/Fox merger.
"Everybody said we did reshoots! We've never done reshoots," Boone said. "And I'll tell you this: if there hadn't been a merger, I'm sure we would've done reshoots the same way every movie does pickups. We didn't even do that, because by the time the merger was done and everything was settled, [the entire cast was] older."
Boone went on to explain that there was virtually no movement on any aspect of the production from around the time that first trailer was released until well after the merger. "We had heard nothing because of the merger," he said. "It was radio silence for about a year where we had no new information at all... [then Disney] called me... and said, 'Would you come finish the movie?' I said, 'I would f***in' love to come finish the movie!'"
It ended up working out, as the time away allowed Boone to come back to the project with fresh eyes. "We came back and finished it up. It took a couple months, and it was nice to be able to come back," he explained. "Knate [Lee], my co-writer, and I, we hadn't seen it in a year. We did a bunch of things here and there that we hadn't thought about or noticed a year before."
All The New Mutants' delays added up to very few changes
At the end of the day, after all of that brouhaha over whether The New Mutants was too scary or not scary enough, whether it was too X-Men-y for Disney to consider releasing, and whether reshoots would render it a completely different movie from what that first trailer advertised, it appears that the finished product will basically be exactly what was conceived and shot by Boone years ago. EW also spoke with one of the flick's stars, Maisie Williams (Game of Thrones), who confirmed as much.
"The movie is exactly the movie we set out to make," Williams said. "I was nervous when they were talking about reshooting or re-editing that it was gonna be very different, but honestly, it's exactly what we set out to do."
That's probably good news for fans of the property, because it's not all too often that a movie is ruined by not enough studio interference. Hopefully, the movie will do the job that Dark Phoenix utterly failed to, and bring a respectable, satisfying close to Fox's stewardship of the X-Men. In addition to Williams, The New Mutants stars Anya Taylor-Joy (Glass), Charlie Heaton (Stranger Things), Blu Hunt (The Originals), Henry Zaga (13 Reasons Why), and Alice Braga (Elysium); the flick finally hits the big screen on April 3, 2020.