Back when it was first announced that Josh Boone was working on The New Mutants, reports suggested that both James McAvoy (Professor Xavier) and Alexandra Shipp (Storm) were set to feature alongside the crop of youngsters in the X-Men spinoff.
Boone has confirmed recently that the long-delayed movie doesn’t feature any X-Men cameos, but it seems the original plan was indeed to include Professor X and Storm. However, the negative reaction to X-Men: Apocalypse put paid to that idea, with Boone revealing to SlashFilm that:
“They really did want it to be different than other stuff. They really pushed us to keep it separate from X-Men stuff, even though it’s set in the X-Men universe. We had early drafts that were supposed to be in the same timeline as X-Men: Apocalypse, so it was originally going to be set in the ’80s. Originally, Professor X and Storm were in it, and Storm very much played the Alice Braga role.
“Over the course of months, a new studio head came in, they said they didn’t want any X-Men movies to take place in the past anymore, as if that was the reason that Apocalypse was bad [laughs]. So we were put in the position where we kind of rewrote it to be set now in a nebulous [point in time], because nobody knew how the movies had turned out. Dark Phoenix wasn’t out yet. Yeah, it’s there – they talk about Professor X and those things, but it doesn’t have cameos from anyone or anything like that.”
SEE ALSO: Marvel’s The New Mutants gets an extended synopsis
It’s crazy to think that more than four years on from Apocalypse, we’re STILL yet to see The New Mutants, although it is currently slated for release this month. Whether or not that will happen given the current climate, we shall have to wait and see.
The New Mutants is directed by Josh Boone (The Fault in Our Stars) and features a cast includes Maisie Williams (Game of Thrones) as Rahne Sinclair/Wolfsbane, Anya Taylor-Joy (The Witch) as Illyana Rasputin/Magik, Charlie Heaton (Stranger Things) as Sam Guthrie/Cannonball, Henry Zaga (13 Reasons Why) as Roberto da Costa/Sunspot, Blu Hunt (The Originals) as Danielle Moonstar/Mirage and Alice Braga (Queen of the South) as Dr. Cecilia Reyes.
