X-Men Producer Confirms New Mutants Reshoots Are Still Happening

X-Men producer Simon Kinberg says The New Mutants reshoots are still planned and will take place this year. Co-written and directed by Josh Boone (The Fault in Our Stars), New Mutants is a spinoff of the X-Men franchise that follows five young mutants who find themselves imprisoned in a secret facility. Boone originally described his vision for the comic book adaptation as a “full-fledged horror movie” in the vein of The Shining and Nightmare on Elm Street. However, he reportedly ended up shooting something that hewed closer to the tone of the X-Men films before it.

Nevertheless, audiences responded well to the initial New Mutants teaser released in October 2017, which re-cut the film to really emphasize its horror elements. As a result, the studio ordered reshoots to help bring the spinoff closer to Boone’s original pitch and pushed the movie back from April 2018 to February 2019, then August that same year. Of course, that was well before Disney finalized its purchase of Fox’s movie and TV assets, leaving everyone to wonder whether New Mutants would ever be released at all (much less, go through additional photography).

Since then, things have (finally) started turning around for the X-Men spinoff. Disney rescheduled New Mutants for April 2020 last month and Kinberg, who’s currently making the rounds promoting X-Men: Dark Phoenix (which he both wrote and directed), has since provided an update on its reshoots. Speaking to Digital Spy, the filmmaker confirmed the reshoots are still scheduled to happen and explained why they keep getting postponed to begin with:

“For all of these movies, Marvel’s really brilliant at scheduling pick-ups into their budget and schedule so it’s all prepared, and we have never been that smart. For us, we’re always scrambling to get these actors back together so they’re all in the same place at the same time.”

Kinberg added that “all of [New Mutants’ cast] are on TV shows”, which is another factor that makes it difficult to find a time where the film’s actors are all available. For example, Maisie Williams (who plays Rahne Sinclair/Wolfsbane) has been working on and/or promoting Game of Thrones season 8 for much of the past year. Similarly, stars Charlie Heaton (Sam Guthrie/Cannonball), Blu Hunt (Danielle Moonstar/Mirage) and Henry Zaga (Roberto da Costa/Sunspot) have all had recent TV commitments that range from Stranger Things season 3 to Hulu’s upcoming Looking for Alaska limited series. Even Anya-Taylor Joy (Illyana Rasputin/Magik) recently worked on Netflix’s The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance series, in-between her appearances in movies like Glass over the last two years.

Despite all that, Kinberg told Digital Spy the New Mutants pickup shoots are still on and will take place later this year, before the film arrives in 2020. That’s certainly encouraging to hear, especially since Disney and Fox could’ve easily cancelled the additional photography and released the spinoff as it is, before they reboot the X-Men at large for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And after so many delays, many people were probably expecting the studios to do just that, rather than spending the extra money needed to realize Boone’s original vision for the film. With that said, here’s hoping The New Mutants is ultimately worth all the extra work it took to make it to the finish line.