I still believe that someday — maybe someday soon — we will actually be able to see Josh Boone’s The New Mutants. The film has been delayed more times than I can remember now. It was originally set to come out in 2018, then ‘19, then this April. Conflicted responses from 20th Century Fox, Disney’s acquisition of Fox and the COVID-19 pandemic all delayed the film and now, just weeks ahead of its final proposed release date, we don’t know when it’ll come out.
But it will! I am sure of that. In fact, I bet it would do rather well in late August or early September. It deserves to be seen because people have been curious about it for literally years and because it’s the last of the X-Men films tied to what was 20th Century Fox. It’s the end of an era. It just seems to not be able to...you know, actually end.
Director Boone spoke with Empire about the film and while this interview was done before the coronavirus delay, Boone definitely touched upon the delays that came before it. He also issued a pretty sick burn to the last X-Men film, Dark Phoenix, which was the worst-reviewed and worst-performing X-Men film ever.
Here’s Boone:
Look, you can only go up after ‘Dark Phoenix’. That’s not to say anything bad about the people involved, but it was what it was. Honestly, I feel less pressure now than I did ahead of [the first slated release date was three months before ‘Dark Phoenix’]. Because we’ve tested our movie so many times, and audiences have loved it.
You’re damn right, you can only go up after Dark Phoenix. New Mutants would have to be bad — and I mean really bad — to rival Phoenix’s crappiness. Boone seems pretty confident that won’t be the case, citing test screenings that have gone over really well with audiences.
I sure hope it’s good. It would be such a bummer to wait this long for the film only to have it be just okay. The fact that Boone recognizes just how bad Dark Phoenix was gives me hope that his X-Men film won’t be nearly as awful.