We all know that Fox’s The New Mutants and X-Men: Dark Phoenix are in trouble. Films don’t get pushed back and have that many reshoots if they are sterling examples of quality filmmaking. However, a new rumor states that they might be so bad that Disney might be more interested in throwing the films away than ever letting them see the light of day.
The rumor comes from an “insider” who posted on the Superhero Hype forums (by way of Comic Book Movie) who says after the shareholder vote approves the sale of Fox’s assets to Disney, an announcement on the two films’ cancellations will soon to follow.
The problem with X-Men: Dark Phoenix came down to basically the cast phoning in their performances (yes, apparently even more than they did in X-Men: Apocalypse). But it is with The New Mutants where the major problems lie, where the film is damned with the worst comparison it could have: it was as bad as 2015’s Fantastic Four reboot.
What went wrong? Let’s count the ways:
- Fox originally wanted The New Mutants to be an R-Rated romp from a teenage perspective of life in the X-Mansion. Sounds like a Porky’s with powers (to which I say, bleh). It would still have hewn closely to the comics, with the team facing off against the Sentinels, with a sequel being more serious and of a darker tone.
- This take went away when Josh Boone was hired, who wanted to make a horror film with superheroes.
- Remember when it first was announced that they would be taking a run at the “Demon Bear Saga” with the film? And we all thought Josh Boone was a director who really understood comics? According to the source, Boone could care less about comics. The Demon Bear stuff was suggested by the studio so Boone’s horror film could be closer to comic book canon, but Boone pretty much discarded that storyline as he played up the horror at the expense of the super heroics.
- The set sounds tumultuous, with Boone seemingly out of his element doing a big budget
superherohorror movie. The source reports was acting hostile to his crew while on set, reminiscent of Josh Trank on the set of Fantastic Four. Anna Taylor-Joy, who plays Magik in the film, apparently developed some animosity with another cast member, and it got to the point that she was not going to return no matter what happened. - The test screens were seen as being disastrous. The horror concept Boone gave audiences was deemed generic and the film was declared boring and unwatchable, with the only good thing about it being the actor’s performances.
- Fox took over the film from Boone at this point, trying to salvage something out of what Boone made. The reshoots were supposedly for scenes to add humor and a little more heart., as well as strengthen the ties to the source material. They also added Daphne Keen’s X-23 character from Logan to the film. One of the breakout performances from that film, Fox felt the character could add a jolt of life into this one.
So, it sounds like the production was a mess, which is fun to read about, but not as much fun to see what came out of it. And don’t forget, the studio took Fantastic Four away from Josh Trank in order to fix it, and the end result was still awful.
Disney feels it makes more sense to just kill both films than undergo extensive and costly reshoots to make them worthy of a place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The transition supposedly will be the official reason why the films are being 86’ed.
As for the other Marvel films being developed by Fox, the source says that Gambit is dead, dead, dead, despite what anybody else has said. X-Force, however, will survive as Deadpool 3: X-Force. The insider says that it will be a way for them to wrap up the R-Rated Ryan Reynolds Deadpool before they move the character over to the more PG MCU.
The source says that while Marvel has yet to figure out what to do with the Fantastic Four and X-Men franchises after they get them, they already have plans for Galactus and Silver Surfer in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
It needs to be said that this news should be taken with an extra large grain of salt. But we can find out as early as today if there is any truth to this rumor.
X-Men: Dark Phoenix is due to be released on February 14, 2019 and The New Mutants set for August 2, 2019…for now.
