It’s time for one of my favorite things in this business that we call show: the restless movie post-mortem! Often, when there is a high profile film that has a messy production history, the release of the film comes accompanied by a breakdown of ‘what went wrong’. It happened with Suicide Squad, It happened with The Mummy with Tom Cruise in the lead role. And now it happens The New Mutants, De Josh Boone-directed X-Men spin-off has shifted its release date more times than we can count, and as the film finally opens in select theaters this weekend, stories are starting to flow in about what went on behind the scenes.
There are two sizes New mutants behind-the-scenes reports to draw from at the moment. One is in Vulture, the other in EW, and they meet here and there. But the bottom line seems to be that the pre-Disney property Fox did not really know what to make of the movie, and after the purchase of Disney, no one really gave much to do with it.
Per the Vulture report, Fox was so disappointed with what Josh Boone had delivered that there was talk of re-recording the entire film:
In post-production, a studio manager suggested that a total do-over would not necessarily be a financial distraction, given the relatively cheap budget of the film. “You could throw the movie out, start over, and it would still be the least expensive X-Men movie to date,” the sources recalled a high-profile Fox executive statement.
Rumors of massive reshoots have been circulating New mutants for years now, though after all, they never actually happened. It’s clear that someone, somewhere, woe great reshoots. But according to Josh Boone and his cast, the film that is now hitting theaters is more or less the original cut of Boone. The merger of Disney-Fox is probably the reason the reshoots actually never happened – after buying House of Mouse Fox, there was very little interest in raising even more money New mutants,
The Gier report also has some early story details, including the revelation that the original script contained X-Men member Storm, and that she acted as a “sadistic prisoner” for the teen mutant characters at the center of the film. However, the EW report contradicts this. EW got an early concept from 2015, stating that it was originally more of a direct spin-off X-Men: Apocalypse, It was played in the 1980s, and featured “characters such as Professor Charles Xavier (James McAvoy), Hank / Beast (Nicholas Hoult), and Ororo / Storm (Alexandra Shipp).” In this version of the script, Storm has a pretty big role in the story. She “still wrestles with PTSD of her days as Horseman or Apocalypse and the loss of her powers.” She “also stumbles upon the remains of an Indian reservation in the opening scenes and discovers Dani [a main character played by Blu Hunt in the finished film] as the only survivor, and thus turn into the main Demon Bear inspiration for the film. ”
But EW adds that “reports suggest that the script depicted Ororo as a sadistic prison for the five youths does not match” with the early versions of the script in their possession. Instead, Storm is named “caregiver for a new mutant school set up in a dilapidated, abandoned hospital, complete with temporary Danger Room made of X-Men hand-me-downs.”
Somewhere along the line, however, Fox cut the budget New mutants in half. This budget cut led to a revision of the script, moving the film “to a mysterious medical facility” and many sequences of special effects nixing that were too expensive. This description also removes it immediately X-Men connections, with Storm being replaced by Cecilia Reyes, a doctoral character played by Alice Braga in the finished film.
As far as behind the scenes shenanigans go, the New mutants story is not dat funest. It sounds like the studio has more or less given up on the film. They did not like the cut that Boone provided, wanted to make it up, but never came to implement it. And now the film is ready to find its way to select theaters. Boone and company had hoped this would be the start of a new trilogy, but of course, that does not happen. We just have to deal with what we have now. And then maybe completely forget it.
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