The New Mutants director reveals original plans for X-Men spin-off, including Storm cameo and pre-Dark Phoenix setting

(Image credit: Marvel)

The New Mutants is finally, almost, maybe here. The last movie in Fox's X-Men series has a release date of August 28 in the United States and September 4 in the United Kingdom – and should the movie actually reach cinemas on those days, the world will be both shocked and celebratory.

Still, director Josh Boone's doing interviews for the New Mutants, and we've been happy to talk with the filmmaker about his "new" movie. Speaking with Total Film for our horror preview, Boone revealed the original plan for the spin-off was to include some well-known X-Men.

"It started off taking place after Apocalypse but before Dark Phoenix," says Boone. "Professor X was in it, Storm was in it. But then a new president of Fox came along and asked that all new X-Men movies no longer be set in a different era. I was like, that's not why Apocalypse was bad...'"

Boone went on to re-write the whole thing "in a vacuum", creating an X-Men movie with only tenuous links to the others in the series. The movie was then completed and scheduled for release in April 2018. Of course, that never happened, and the release date was pushed (February 2019) – and then pushed again (August 2019) and again (April 2020) and again (current release date). 

"There are no hard feelings because the movie we're releasing is definitely the director's cut," Boone says. "The movie is still exactly the same because we never had the luxury of reshoots. The one reason I haven't had too much anxiety about it is that I still haven't seen another movie do what we did. It feels real, and it doesn't feel like a typical studio movie. To me, that's the reason for this movie to exist."

The full interview with Boone – along with a full horror preview – is in the new issue of Total Film magazine, which reaches shelves this Friday, August 21. Candyman adorns the cover – check out exclusive images from the sequel here.

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(Image credit: Total Film)

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Jack Shepherd
Freelance Journalist

Jack Shepherd is the former Senior Entertainment Editor of GamesRadar. Jack used to work at The Independent as a general culture writer before specializing in TV and film for the likes of GR+, Total Film, SFX, and others. You can now find Jack working as a freelance journalist and editor.