director nods. “There were no reshoots. The fi lm
you’ll see is the same one we cut two years back.”
When the team reassembles for press duties
in New York in early 2020, that sentiment is very
much echoed by the cast. They spent the previous
night together, watching the fi nished product,
and spirits are soaring. “It’s the fi lm Josh set out
to make,” says Taylor-Joy. “It felt so nice to all be
reunited for it. We were whooping and hollering
every time someone did something cool.”
“It was overwhelming,” adds Hunt. “I never
thought I’d see myself in a movie, and the fi rst
shot is of my face! I was shaking in the theatre,
but Maisie grabbed me, like, ‘You’re good! It’s
good!’” Henry Zaga is similarly enthusiastic:
“It’s a beautiful fi lm. Honestly, this whole ‘delay’
thing was just a marketing stunt to build hype...”
He’s joking, obviously, but there’s a glimmer
of truth here. After such a long wait, expectations
are high. Plus, in the wake of the merger, The
New Mutants will be the fi nal fi lm in the current
X-Men series. Is there extra pressure to perform?
After all, the most recent X-outing, 2019’s Dark
Phoenix, was, erm...how can we put this politely?
“One of the worst-reviewed movies of last
year?” Boone suggests, helpfully. Well...yes.
He shrugs. “Look, you can only go up after Dark
Phoenix. That’s not to say anything bad about the
people involved, but it was what it was. Honestly,
I feel less pressure now than I did ahead of [the
fi rst slated release date]. Because we’ve tested our
movie so many times, and audiences have loved it.”
Regardless of any studio politics, if The New
Mutants scores big at the box offi ce, there will, of
course, be a sequel. “We’d love to make another,”
Boone admits. “We know it’d be set in Brazil, and
it’ll introduce Sunspot’s dad, Emmanuel, as a
villain. We had Antonio Banderas ready to play him,
and we were planning a tag at the end of this movie
to set it up. But then the merger happened, and
everything was up in the air, so we never shot it.”
Sitting alongside him, Knate Lee chips in.
“In a weird way, I think the delay’s been good for
us. Last year, I saw the most epic, grand-scale
superhero movie ever [Avengers: Endgame].
You can’t go bigger than that. So, it feels like the
perfect time for a superhero movie that’s more
intimate and claustrophobic. And we still have
so many ‘fi rsts’: we’re the fi rst Marvel horror,
we’re the fi rst to feature a gay relationship. Even
though we’re late...we still beat everybody.”
Where the X-Men go next, and how they’ll
slot into the MCU, remains to be seen. But Boone’s
fi lm sounds like a fi tting end to the franchise’s
fi rst chapter. After all, Marvel’s whole concept of
‘mutants’ was always a metaphor for “misfi ts,
outcasts and rebels”.
Anyone who was different.THE NEW MUTANTS WILL BE IN CINEMAS LATER THIS YEARSORRY
FO R
THE
DELAY
Five other films
that took their
sweet timeTHREE YEARS
THE CABIN IN THE WOODS
Drew Goddard shot his meta-horror
in spring 2009 before plans for 3D
post-conversion delayed a release;
later, fi nancial trouble at distributor
MGM saw it fall away even further.
Picked up by Lionsgate in 2011, it
eventually hit screens in April 2012.FIVE YEARS
HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER
Having fi lmed his 16mm murder-fest in
1985, director John McNaughton got
Henry into festivals and sent it to critics
to spread the word. After further delays
thanks to its X (later NC-17) rating, it
was fi nally released in January 1990.SEVEN YEARS
MARGARET
Filmed in 2005, Kenneth Lonergan’s
drama got mired in editing tussles, the
director favouring a three-hour cut, the
studio wanting it under two-and-a-half.
After multiple lawsuits it was released
as the latter in September 2011;
Lonergan’s (excellent) cut fi nally hit
DVD in July 2012.SEVEN YEARS
ACCIDENTAL LOVE
David O. Russell began shooting his
drama ‘Nailed’ for Capitol Films in
2008, but fi nancial problems kept
halting the production. In 2010, with
fi lming incomplete, Capitol assembled
a cut to entice O. Russell back for
reshoots; he watched it and quit. In
2014, Millennium Entertainment bought
the fi lm and recut it. Russell had his
name removed from the fi lm, retitled
for a 2015 release as Accidental Love.13 YEARS AND COUNTING
HIPPIE HIPPIE SHAKE
This comic take on ’60s counterculture
magazine Oz was fi lmed with Cillian
Murphy and Sienna Miller in
September 2007. In 2009, director
Beeban Kidron and writer Lee Hall left
during post-production, citing creative
differences. A release was scheduled
for 2010, but didn’t happen. Rumour
has it the negatives have been
intentionally destroyed. ALEX GODFREYThe Scooby Gang’s all here.
No...wait, wrong show.Rahne and Danielle recreate the famous
Doc-Brown-dangling sequence from Back
To The Future. Maybe.