‘New Mutants’ Was Supposed To Be Set in the ’80s, With X-Men Cameos
Oh the times, they are a changin’. Disney officially owns both Marvel Studios and 20th Century Fox (now 20th Century Pictures), and in the commotion, the X-Men spinoff The New Mutants received several release delays. The New Mutants, originally from 20th Century Fox, was first intended to be set in the 1980s like other recent decade-specific films in the franchise. According to Collider, the movie's setting was instead pushed up to the present day. Why?
Says New Mutants director Josh Boone: “They basically decided after [X-Men:] Apocalypse, they didn’t want anything set in the past anymore, like that was the reason that it was bad.” But he doesn't necessarily agree with that reasoning. “The one before that in the 70s was pretty awesome. The ’67 was pretty great.” Boone’s still optimistic about the finished product, and assures that the decade change won't affect much in terms of the set. The location is isolated enough that there's no phones or wifi, so it “may as well be the ’80s.” The only aspect really impacted is who could be used character-wise; Boone said his film originally had “Professor X in it, with Storm in it, and a bunch of other stuff.”
Another perk of bringing X-Men to present-day is the possibility of the franchise potentially merging with the rest of the contemporary Marvel Cinematic Universe. That would be pretty cool. And now that it's not attached to the X-Men films of the past, The New Mutants has a chance to do something entirely different, infusing elements of horror into its action-based premise. The New Mutants hits theaters April 3.
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