The New Mutants is Officially Rated PG-13

Josh Boone’s X-Men spinoff movie The New Mutants has received an official PG-13 rating. The final X-Men film Fox completed prior to being bought by Disney, The New Mutants has been sitting on the shelf for more than two years now. Originally scheduled to arrived in April 2018, the movie was delayed multiple times to undergo reshoots that kept being pushed back. Finally, after finalizing their purchase of Fox a year ago, Disney re-scheuled The New Mutants to open in theaters this April, quietly cancelling its reshoots along the way.

Based on the comic books created by Chris Claremont and Bob McLeod, The New Mutants revolves around five young mutants as they fight to escape a secret facility where they’re being held against their will. While Boone (who cowrote the script with Knate Lee) has said his vision for the film was inspired by R-rated horror movies like A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors and The Shining, he’s always maintained The New Mutants would ultimately be rated PG-13. As of today, though, the rating is officially official.

ERC has now confirmed The New Mutants was rated PG-13 by the MPAA for “violent content, some disturbing/bloody images, some strong language, thematic elements and suggestive material”. Of course, PG-13 is the rule and not the exception when it comes to Fox’s X-Men films; save for the Deadpool movies and Logan, the rest of the franchise (which kicked off in 2000) received the same rating.

From a box office perspective, The New Mutants stands to benefit from its PG-13 rating. An R-rating inherently limit a film’s commercial potential, which is the main reason why studios prefer to avoid them when possible. Of course, an R-rating isn’t a death sentence either; recent horror offerings like IT and Blumhouse’s Halloween have opened big at the box office despite being rated R, as have many of the movies in The Conjuring franchise. Still, PG-13 horror films have the capacity to deliver the intense experience fans of the genre expect going in, but without ostracizing those who’re too young and/or emotionally unprepared for an R-rated scary thriller. In the case of The New Mutants, Boone has previously hyped the film as being the “hardest PG-13 ever made” (for what that’s worth).

Still, even with a PG-13 rating, it will be interesting to see how The New Mutants fares at the box office. Rumor has it Marvel Studios is considering incorporating the film into the MCU, which could provide additional incentive for some moviegoers to give it a look. A number of the film’s cast members (like Maisie Williams and Anya Taylor-Joy) have gone on to become bigger names in the years since they shot The New Mutants, so that too should work to the movie’s advantage. For now, teenaged X-Men fans can take comfort in knowing they won’t have to wait to find out just what a “spooky” mutant adventure is actually like.