Feeling some deja vu? That’s because this isn’t the first time we’ve reported on a new trailer for Fox’s The New Mutants. The first trailer was released way, way back in October of 2017 and since then this movie has faced nothing but problems. The trailer we got back then was pretty similar to this: same song, same horror meets X-Men vibes but the big difference here is that the release date at the end might be … real?
Since that first trailer over two years ago, The New Mutants has been through reshoots and multiple release shuffles—not to mention the merger of Twentieth Century Fox and Disney. After an initial release date of April 13, 2018, the film was pushed to February of 2019, then August 2019 and now it’s theoretically really coming out this April. But we’ll believe that when we’re seated in the theaters.
It’s felt like we’d never see this movie, or that it was some kind of disaster that the corporate overlords were just going to bury. It’s certainly a departure for the X-Men franchise, as it’s clearly more of a horror movie than it is a superhero adventure. That’s what the director hoped for and I am legitimately interested in seeing what it does.
The wait for New Mutants might actually serve the film well. A lot has changed in the superhero world, even in the last two years. In television and streaming, Supers and mutants and metas have become much darker in series like The Boys and Doom Patrol while the X-Men franchise has again sputtered to a disappointing end with a Dark Phoenix finale.
This dark, scary movie about screwed up teen mutants who have killed people might fit better with our darker, more screwed up tastes and be a shot of something new into the Fox/X-Men world. Then again, it might just be terrible.
For those of you who may have forgotten (which is all of you at this point we assume) the titular new mutants are: Game of Thrones’ Maisie Williams as Rahne Sinclair/Wolfsbane, who is basically a werewolf, or at least able to shift into a wolf-like form. Stranger Things‘ Charlie Heaton as Sam Guthrie aka Cannonball, who can create energy blasts, Henry Zaga as Roberto de Costa/Sunspot who can fly and make light do stuff. There’s the very dangerous seeming Ilyana Rasputin/Marik played by Anya Taylor-Joy of The VVitch who can teleport and do magic and all sorts of stuff. And our entry pint will be Dani Moonstar, known in the X-world as Psyche or Mirage who can create illusions—especially of people’s fears. Good for a horror flick!
The film will also feature Alica Braga as Dr. Cecile Reyes, who is overseeing this experiment/detention center for bad mutants or whatever is going on, and, according to IMDb, Antonio Banderas in some capacity, though he’s not in the trailers so … grain of salt.
We’ll keep you updated when (or if) this one really hits theaters.
(image: Twentieth Century Fox)
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