Fox reportedly considered scrapping New Mutants and starting from scratch

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

After more than a few delays, THE NEW MUTANTS will finally be hitting theaters tomorrow, but the road has not been easy. The X-MEN spin-off entered production over three years ago in what was billed as a "hybrid-horror Breakfast Club" movie, but according to a new report from Vulture, 20th Century Fox reportedly weren't pleased with what director Josh Boone had delivered.

"It was understood this was going to be X-Men at a price," a source with knowledge of the development of THE NEW MUTANTS told Vulture. "Deadpool had come out and was such a hit. It was sort of like, 'What would an X-Men movie look like if it was hard-R, broke down some walls, was kind of meta, but it was also like a teen-horror flick with a John Hughes sensibility?'" Another source claimed that the script by Josh Boone and Knate Lee needed to be toned down in terms of its crude humor. "Punk-rock-y, rebellious teens are already baked into the X-Men, but here, one of the characters was a misogynist and graffiti-ing his penis on stuff," said one source. "There were head scratchers. Like, That’s not going to work." There were also concerns regarding the treatment of previous X-MEN characters, such as Storm, who was a "sadistic jailer" in the early drafts.

It felt like the kids were being tortured. If the X-Men are holding [the young mutants] there, it can’t feel different from the mental furniture that audiences bring into the theater knowing that the X-Men are good guys. Storm like that made no sense.

20th Century Fox's Stacey Snider personally ordered a course correction when she learned where THE NEW MUTANTS was headed, with one source saying that they had zero faith that the horror/teen-movie version would work, instead going for straight horror. However, once principal photography was complete, Fox was reportedly so unhappy with the first cut that they "discussed throwing the entire movie out to 'start over' with a total reshoot." Yikes. In any other situation, there would have been some degree of reshoots, but the Disney/Fox merger put a halt on those, and by the time everything had been settled, the entire cast was noticeably older. Even during post-production, optimism was not high, with several sources recalling a high-ranking Fox executive claimed that "You could throw the movie out, star over, and it would still be the least expensive X-Men movie so far."

The official synopsis for THE NEW MUTANTS:

20th Century Studios in association with Marvel Entertainment presents “The New Mutants,” an original horror thriller set in an isolated hospital where a group of young mutants is being held for psychiatric monitoring. When strange occurrences begin to take place, both their new mutant abilities and their friendships will be tested as they battle to try and make it out alive.

THE NEW MUTANTS will be hitting theaters on August 28th.