It sounds like The New Mutants’ rocky road to the screen was hard on its writer-director. 

In a new interview, Josh Boone reflects on the challenges and frustrations he faced during the making of the troubled X-Men spinoff. It was finally released under the Marvel banner to a subdued reaction in 2020, leaving Boone to pick up the pieces.

Boone says that the film’s production was significantly impacted by the sale of 20th Century Fox to Disney. This was a full year before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic affected both The New Mutants’ box office performance and audience reception.

“It’s so hard because it was so traumatic,” he told The Direct. “The studio was sold, and we hit a pandemic… The studio was sold during the shooting, and then the pandemic happened when they decided to release it. And it just was such a — I had a wonderful time. I love the cast so much, but making that… It took so many years, and it was so unfulfilling, ultimately.”

Boone admitted that the finished film did not align with his original vision, stating, “We didn’t really get to make the movie we wanted to make. We made half the movie we wanted to make. And the release was so compromised by the pandemic… I’d rather just never do it again, just to be honest.” 

Fans were also disappointed with how The New Mutants turned out. After all, it was set to feature beloved Marvel Comics characters Magik, Cannonball, Mirage, and Sunspot. With a young cast that boasted rising stars like Anya Taylor-Joy and Charlie Heaton, and originally pitched as the start of a trilogy, people were hopeful that the spinoff would lead to more X-Men stories in the works rather than fewer.

Sadly, it wasn’t to be. The movie was a box office bomb and received mixed reviews from critics. It hasn’t yet been reclaimed by the MCU in the same way that other Fox X-Men movies have, but there’s always a chance that we’ll see a fresh version of some New Mutants characters in Marvel Studios’ upcoming live-action X-Men adventures.

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