If it seems like the past several months have presented one unforseen obstacle after the next, then you are definitely not alone. Director Josh Boone (The Fault in Our Stars) has been working on The New Mutants for years... literally. The original idea for the film, itself based on Marvel's line of New Mutants comics, was to use it as a spin-off of sorts, expanding the X-Men universe in the wake of X-Men: Apocalypse, which hit theaters in 2016. Early drafts of the story, about five Mutants inexperienced with their powers and being held against their will in a secret facility, took place in the Apocalpyse timeline and included Professor X (played by James McAvoy), but then... a lot happened. Disney acquired Fox in one of the most significant deals in Hollywood history, futher delaying The New Mutants due to uncertainty with the X-Men brand.
Oh, and then a pandemic happened.
So, yeah, you can say The New Mutants caught a bit of a rough break during a stretch of time that presented multiple shuffling release dates. Now, however, it has gone from the film that felt destined to be forever delayed to one of considerable significance: notably the first major wide release to arrive in theaters since the pandemic forced closures around the world back in March. Tickets for The New Mutants are now on sale here at Fandango.
Instead of getting the next offshoot of Fox's X-Men franchise, however, we're getting a Marvel movie that plays by its own rules and isn't tied down to any existing movie franchise. "We really were able to sort of make our own little pocket universe, which let us make it unlike any other superhero movies," director Josh Boone told Fandango in a lengthy chat prior to tickets going on sale. "We shot on real locations, and we were sort of inspired by horror movies from the '80s and '90s, as well as [films like] One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Girl, Interrupted. We just tried to do something different and really make something that was its own thing, separate from the X-Men universe, but also part of it."
Fandango: First of all, congrats! Even when you were back at Comic-Con, there was concern that The New Mutants wouldn’t be released in August, but now that we’re days away, it’s looking good.
Josh Boone: Yeah, it’s really going to come out!
Fandango: That is big! This is a film that had its release delayed multiple times over a span of years, and now it is significant and historic being the first major wide release in theaters since March. How does that feel?
Josh Boone: I don't know, man. I'm really excited for people to finally get to see it. The cast is really excited for people to get to see it. It's just weird. We finished working on The Stand recently. I directed the first and the last episode of that, and then a pandemic happened. And now [we have a film coming out] that's about people trapped inside a place they can't get out of. So, it's like a weird Twilight Zone-y aspect to these projects that I've been working on, but it seems like the right time for it. Disney called me this morning and said about 80% of theaters should be open by then in the US, which is great. Hopefully people enjoy the movie. It's a good breaking-out-of-jail movie.
Fandango: What kind of an X-Men movie is this? And for those who aren't as familiar with all of the X-Men movies, do you have to have seen any of the previous films in order to understand this one?
Josh Boone: No, not at all. I mean, it's definitely in the same universe of these other films, meaning it exists in a world where the X-Men are real and where Professor X is real. But other than that, you're not going to miss anything if you haven’t seen the other films. If you're a person who is not familiar with the X-Men, you can certainly watch this and you could follow along and enjoy it.
Fandango: For those who are longtime fans of the X-Men movies, how much will this film connect to the other films that we've seen before and will it reference characters or storylines that we've seen previously?
Josh Boone: I'd say peripherally, but you won't see cameos by X-Men characters. It'd be strange to have them in the movie because our movie is so totally different. I'd say it's more grounded than typical X-men movies are and [there’s a lot of] character and emotional stuff in it. It’s kind of like my other movies, in some ways, and kind of married to this dark superhero movie.
Fandango: When you were growing up reading comics, what was it about New Mutants that spoke to you as a fan so much that it stuck with you and inspired you to want to pitch a film based on the comic years later?
Josh Boone: It was really Bill Sienkiewicz's art. We were Marvel kids, Knate [Lee] and I, who I wrote the movie with. We grew up together in Virginia and our moms were best friends, so we've known each other since we were little babies. And we basically just grew up reading Marvel comics. That was the only thing we cared about in the 1980s when we were kids.
We sort of read them all, but the New Mutants never really grabbed me or interested me until it got to this Demon Bear storyline, where Bill Sienkiewicz came on. He brought such a strange dark artistry to comics. I'd never seen covers like the ones that he painted for the series. I'd never seen characters drawn the way he drew them or seen the frames of comics pushed the way that he pushed them.
And so those comics -- specifically the run that he did with Chris Claremont on New Mutants -- I always thought about and held on to and thought that would be a really cool, interesting way to make a movie that was a superhero movie, but different. In the comic, they didn't have costumes on. They had normal clothes. And even their storyline, it was metaphysical and strange and sort of such an interior piece. The bad guys were really themselves, and the things that they'd done and the things that haunted them and everything. All that sort of stuff really spoke to us.
Fandango: The film begins with Dani and what looks like a harrowing scenario involving her and her father. Talk about that opening and how it sets the stage for the rest of the film.
Josh Boone: Well, I mean, we really just wanted to kind of be true to the comics while at the same time upping the ante with the movie and introducing this beast that's kind of stalking her [and] that stalks her through the comics. We wanted to do something really subjective where a girl wakes up in the middle of the night, and basically the world that she lives in is in flames. And you're never quite sure what it is that's causing it. We just thought it was an exciting opening and to really kind of put you in her shoes. You follow her so much in the movie, and she's sort of the audience. So yeah, we just wanted to plant you in there as firmly as we could.
Fandango: Much has been said about the relationship between Dani and Maisie's character, Rahne, in terms of it being a big part of the film. It's also significant for superhero movies in general, to have a love story between two women. Can you talk about how that came together, and how it drives the film forward?
Josh Boone: It's funny, I think about it more now than when we made it and when we wrote it. It really came organically from their relationship in the comics. They have a telepathic relationship in the comics, so it just naturally happened that way. In general, I’m a sucker for a love story [and] it seemed like an interesting relationship for them to have, but It's really only now that we're talking about it in the press that I’ve thought much about how it might actually be a really cool, interesting historic thing in comic book movies. I feel like this sort of relationship has definitely not been done before.
Fandango: Speaking of Rahne, she's a character at odds with her abilities because of her religious upbringing. I've read that you had a strict religious upbringing. Is her character the one that you most relate to? And how much of your own past did you bring to the table when working on the film?
Josh Boone: Well, I mean, all the movies I've made have sort of dealt with young people to some degree or another. It's something that I can always emotionally go back to. This one in particular, though, was more about seeing the things in it that were personal and convenient, and then kind of exploiting those things. Definitely, what you're talking about with Rahne's religious upbringing is a big part of the comic, and I certainly responded to it. We just happened to be swept up and caught up in the evangelical movement in the mid to late '80s in the Bible belt. I was in Virginia. It kind of swept the nation and like, boy, we all had to get saved, and there was fear of hell and brimstone and demons and things like that.
I’ve always found it interesting how myth sort of rules our lives, especially if you're taught these things when you're young, whether they're true or not. So all of that played into Rahne's story, and it was really her [about her] power. All these kids have traumas that they've experienced, and all their origin stories are traumatic. Dani coming to this facility forces them to deal with all those things. Her powers force them to deal with all those things in a way that their doctor could never really make them do.
Fandango: When it comes to origin stories, Illyana, aka Magik, has a rich backstory. We see her fighting these super creepy faceless characters in the previews, and she’s the sister of Colossus, who appeared in the Deadpool movies. What can you say about her and how much her history we'll see in the film?
Josh Boone: Each one of these characters has some sort of personal demons that Dani's powers are forcing them to deal with in almost a therapeutic way, whether they like it or not. And Illyana’s backstory is the most complicated backstory in the comics because involves her being kidnapped and brought to a place called Limbo by a demonic figure and raised in this limboish realm. We did our own spin on that, once again, just to ground it and make sure it felt as grounded as the other characters' stories. But it's fun and it's interesting. It deals with a pretty serious subject matter, her backstory. But yeah, I'd say we did our own spin on her very convoluted comic backstory and did a streamlined version that I think focused and sharpened some things.
Fandango: Demon Bear is the central antagonist for the film and a significant character early on in the New Mutants comics. For those not familiar with Demon Bear, how would you describe the character, and what makes it different from other villains that we've seen on screen before?
Josh Boone: The thing that was always interesting to me about the comics was this sort of spirit from her tribe, sort of like a ghost story you'd tell kids, or like a legend that you'd tell kids by a campfire. But it was deeply connected to Dani. It really assaulted and ruined her family and chased her through these comics where we find her having this sort of a metaphysical battle with it over the course of this series. Like Illyana's backstory, we sort of took that and used it not to our own ends, I wouldn't say, but I guess found an organic and streamlined way to use those same elements to make the movie ready.
What’s interesting to me is that she’s both the protagonist and the antagonist because her powers are so directly tied to what this bear is, whether she knows it or not. I think a lot of it is about the guilt that these characters feel over things that they did, but they didn't really do intentionally. They were things where their powers were not anything that they could control. We looked at this a little differently than other superhero movies where we really wanted it to be scary like Carrie and a Firestarter, and have that Stephen King twist, I guess. It's just this idea that having powers would be a horrifying thing, not necessarily an immediately empowering thing.
That’s the angle we took, which again, brings me back to films like Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors, which was a movie Knate and I really, really loved when we were kids. It was so imaginative and cool, and it's about kids who were in a psychiatric institute when Freddy's in there with them. It’s the first Nightmare on Elm Street story where the characters actually start to be able to fight back and become empowered. It was just cool. They did a really great poster that’s reminiscent of the Nightmare on Elm Street 3 poster, but with our characters.
Fandango: Yeah, I saw that – it was very cool.
Josh Boone: It’s funny, I say that might even be the biggest signpost of all… it's like Nightmare on Elm Street 3!
Fandango: Speaking of spooky things and spooky movies, you shot it at a real state hospital, Medfield State Hospital, where Martin Scorsese shot Shutter Island. I mean, it's a haunted location. Did anything crazy happen while you guys were there?
Josh Boone: Unfortunately, not to me, but I heard stories. There was definitely a haunted atmosphere there, and there were people who worked on the movie who experienced strange things in that place, which was a place that had been sort of closed for about 50 years. But I think it was about 150 years old and has had a wide variety of seriously messed-up people who were once there. The attic that we shot in, somebody had hung themselves from the rafters. We just had crew people who wanted to be walked back at night to their cars because they were so creeped out.
I would immediately rush to wherever something had happened. I'd climb up the ladder the grip was on, where they were putting up a light where they heard like a whisper in their ear and got so scared that they had to go home for the day. And I'd be like, "Please, God. Please, God tell me if there's life after death or not." And then nothing would happen.
Fandango: That’s cool, though. It adds to the ambiance of the film.
Josh Boone: I was Fox Mulder. I was running around trying to try to put the X-file together, but I always missed when it happened.
Fandango: You've said that the fans of this film are the most patient fans in the world. What are you most excited for these patient fans to see when this film comes out?
Josh Boone: I'm just always hoping that they find characters that they see a reflection of themselves in. I mean, I remember how I felt when I was that age. I'm just always trying to make things that can speak to a person. I remember how I felt back then, and hopefully the film helps some other people along.
Theaters are starting to reopen! The New Mutants hits select theaters on August 28, so find out if it will be playing in your area and get your tickets. Be sure to check out what theaters are doing to help you return to the movies safely.
