If you’ve seen Regretting You, you know it’s not a comedy by any means. The film, among 2025 movie releases and new book adaptations, follows a family as they deal with two tragic deaths in the family that were secretly having an affair together. But, Allison Williams in particular brings some levity to the drama in a few moments. A new outtake from Regretting You has dropped, and it’s too funny.

Remember the scene where Williams’ Morgan finds her daughter Clara (Mckenna Grace) smoking weed with a boy from school Miller (Mason Thames)? Check out some of the alternative ways she was going to drive up thanks to this Instagram post:

According to Paramount Pictures, director Josh Boone loved watching Allison Williams deliver in the scene that he “made her do multiple takes for his own entertainment.” Hear that guy laughing in the background of the video? Yeah, that’s Boone. Can you blame him? Williams is hilarious in every one of these takes. There’s something about the intense eye contact that she glares at Thames’ Miller that’s just a blast to watch.

In the movie itself, this was a really funny scene, too. There’s something about Morgan showing up in that exact moment from that angle, and her comedic delivery that is both believable and just hilarious. It’s definitely not the only funny scene for Morgan in Regretting You, as she goes through the pretty serious grief process of losing her husband (played by Scott Eastwood), who she just found out was sleeping with her sister Jenny (Wlla Fitzgerald) for who knows how long.

Regretting You is based on the Colleen Hoover bestselling novel of the same name. In our interview with director Josh Boone, he told us that the author had a “very minimal” presence in the production process, but the book was a huge resource to him, the production team and the cast. Mckenna Grace told us she had a ton of tabs throughout the book, and she’d bring details to Boone’s attention sometimes.

While critics weren’t especially fond of Regretting You, audiences seemed to be into it. After it topped the box office last weekend, it has made a total of $54.7 million worldwide. That means it at least made its money back, and perhaps turned a modest profit. It’s certainly not as huge of a movie as Hoover’s It Ends With Us was (it made $351.4 million worldwide), but at least this one doesn’t appear to have any behind-the-scenes drama.

You can check out Regretting You in theaters now. We can’t wait to see more bonus features from this movie at some point. We hope there’s a whole blooper reel planned, because it has to be good.

When it comes to upcoming book adaptations, readers of the source material typically need to remove themselves, because imagining what the words on the page will look like in real life is too often a let down to the big screen version. The Regretting You movie is no different, but if you’ve wondered how the cast chose to compare the book with the script, we have some insights from them.

During CinemaBlend’s exclusive Regretting You interviews, we spoke to a few of the stars about their relationship with the Colleen Hoover bestseller the romance movie is based on. First, here are Mason Thames’ thoughts:

Regretting You is the second of Colleen Hoover’s novels to get a movie, with last year’s It Ends With Us being the first. Director Josh Boone told us that Hoover was not involved much on set, but he definitely kept her words close, and it offered him a lot of help during the production. Scott Eastwood said this:

Believe it or not, this is a pretty common way for actors to approach book adaptations. Heck, when we talked to Keira Knightley recently for The Woman In Cabin 10, the actress, who has been in a ton of them, said she didn’t even touch the novel. Eastwood decided to stay true to the script over anything else. But his co-star, and daughter on the film, Mckenna Grace was all over the book on set. As she shared with us:

Thames told us that Grace would often point to little details in the book and connect with the director to add them on set. Clearly she was doing her homework on set and cared a lot about giving fans of the book a solid rendition of Clara. (Grace is currently filming The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, so we’d have to imagine she’s got more tabs on set for that, too!)

By their diversity in answers, it’s obvious that there’s not one way to handle being in a book adaptation. Sometimes it’s nice to have both versions to look at, and other times it might be too much, especially when you’re balancing a director’s vision. And as it goes with most movies, not everything made it into the movie – like one version of the adorable ending. Regretting You is now playing in theaters.

When it comes to upcoming book adaptations, we’re always curious to see how the source material compares, and how much the author gets involved (should they be still living). The latest of the 2025 movies based on a bestselling book is Regretting You, which was authored by viral author Colleen Hoover, but how much was she involved in the film’s production?

Hoover is listed as an executive producer on Regretting You. When I spoke to the movie’s director Josh Boone, he shared that her involvement in the production was “very minimal.” As he explained further:

Boone is of course referencing last year’s It Ends With Us, where Colleen Hoover was an executive producer. In the case of that film, she was reportedly much more involved in the creative process, and even had a cameo. However, since It Ends With Us led to a legal battle between producer/star Blake Lively and director/star Justin Baldoni, which remains ongoing with new developments, it’s understandable Hoover might have wanted to step away.

Hoover was part of the It Ends With Us press tour, which underwent a lot of scrutiny and has led to the author being in the middle of some of the drama. As Boone also told us about the making of Regretting You:

It sounds like Regretting You had a lot of well-trusted producers behind it that allowed Hoover to sit back and trust the hands adapting her novel. It also helps that a fellow author named Anna Todd is on her side as an executive producer as well. In terms of Josh Boone, who also famously adapted The Fault In Our Stars back in 2014, he also shared with us what was exciting about adapting Hoover’s 2019 novel.

Boone continued to say he was interested in “the moment where the idealism of being a teenager bumps up against the reality of the adult world.” You can see his full comments in the video above, and check out our full Regretting You interviews on YouTube. We also talked to the cast about Dave Franco playing a 17-year-old and asked Mckenna Grace about a Tangled fancast we saw for her as Regretting You plays in theaters now.

The superhero genre has been going strong for years, but before shared universes like the MCU (which is streaming with a Disney+ subscription), there was the X-Men movies. That franchise due to Disney's acquisition of 20th Century Fox, but two more movies were released after that deal: Dark Phoenix and the spinoff The New Mutants. The latter was directed by Josh Boone, who recently spoke about why trying to get his movie filmed and released was "traumatic." Let's break it down.

Fans who spent years watching the Marvel movies in order will recall how the X-Men franchise helped to shape the genre as we know it today. The New Mutants had a lot going for it, thanks to its stellar cast of young talent. But in a conversation with The Direct, Boone shared why making the movie was so difficult. In his words:

He's not wrong. The New Mutants was delayed a number of times prior to its release, including some pandemic-related ones. And without the support of 20th Century Fox after the deal with Disney, it ultimately became an "unfulfilling" experience for the Fault in our Stars director. And really, can you blame him?

Boone specifically mentions loving the cast of The New Mutants, which included Anya Taylor-Joy, Maisie Williams, and Stranger Things star Charlie Heaton. Their casting was exciting, but ultimately they only played their mutant roles for one film.

Later in the same interview, Boone went on to explain how his vision for the X-Men spinoff was ultimately never seen. As he put it:

This would make sense for those who followed this project's journey at the time. It was teased that The New Mutants would be super horror-infused. But while there were a ew jump scares and creepy moments during its runtime, it wasn't nearly as scary as it sounds like Boone wanted it to be. So add that to his list of grievances.

It's a bummer that Josh Boone feels so negatively about The New Mutants, but his story shows how much can change from a movie's development to its eventual release. While it sounds like he would not do it all again, there were some epic moments in the movie's runtime. There's just no way he could have predicted Fox being sold as well as a global pandemic that closed theaters.

The New Mutants is streaming on Disney+ along with the rest of the X-Men movies. Fans of that property should look forward to Avengers: Doomsday, which will be released December 18th of next year as part of the 2026 movie release list. After all, a number of OG X-Men actors are set to appear.

Even after the success of The Stand miniseries in 1994, Hollywood refused to give up on the dream of turning Stephen King’s apocalyptic epic into a feature film, and it was a little over a decade ago that the effort hit a high gear. In January 2011, it was announced that a partnership had been forged between CBS Films (the owner of the rights to the book) and Warner Bros., and the plan was to develop a blockbuster for the big screen. The news immediately inspired excitement from fans… though there were also plenty of reasons to have reservations given the prior attempts to adapt the book as a feature.

As it turns out, those reservations were justified because the movie had a hell of a time getting off the ground. David Yates – who had success with Warner Bros. making numerous Harry Potter films – was said to be attached in July 2011, but he dropped out a few months later, with reports saying that he felt the source material didn’t have the action sequences or set pieces to make the tentpole blockbuster that the studio wanted. After Yates’ departure, Ben Affleck was the next filmmaker tapped for the gig in October 2011, but he admitted to be struggling with the project a year later, and by August 2013 he was replaced at the helm by Scott Cooper. By November of that year, Cooper was no longer attached, citing creative differences.

It really wasn’t until early 2014 that the project started making moves toward its final form – which wouldn’t end up being a film at all. In February of that year, Josh Boone was tapped as The Stand’s new director, and after talk of possibly making the adaptation as multiple features (with a pre-The Dark Tower Matthew McConaughey rumored to play the villainous Randall Flagg), the adaptation made a key pivot. In June 2015, it was revealed that new plans were in the works that would once again see Stephen King’s book get the live-action treatment on the small screen. By 2016, it fell into a purgatory as a proper home was searched for… but then the streaming wars came along to save it.

With CBS planning the launch of an independent streaming service in 2019 (CBS All Access, which would turn into Paramount+), it was officially announced that The Stand would be developed as part of its early original programming slate. Josh Boone remained attached, collaborating with Justified writer Benjamin Cavell to develop the series, and by June of that year the new miniseries lined up a cast including James Marsden (as Stu Redman), Amber Heard (as Nadine Cross), Whoopi Goldberg (as Mother Abigail Freemantle), Greg Kinnear (as Glen Bateman), Odessa Young (as Fran Goldsmith), Henrique Zaga (as Nick Andros), and Alexander Skarsgård (as Randall Flagg). The pandemic-centric series went into production that September (about a month before the first reports of a COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, China), and filming wrapped within a few weeks of the World Health Organization declaring a global emergency.

With freedom from content censorship, prescient timing due to world events, expansive runtime real estate, and a final episode written by Stephen King himself as a coda to his beloved novel, The Stand miniseries premiered with remarkable potential… but does it live up to it? That’s the subject of this week’s Adapting Stephen King.

How Paramount+’s The Stand Differs From Mick Garris’ The Stand

As previously seen with 2019’s Pet Sematary, there’s an extra challenge that comes with developing a remake of a beloved book when the original adaptation was scripted by the author of the source material. In the making of the 1994 The Stand miniseries, Stephen King worked to translate his novel across mediums as faithfully as possible – albeit while dealing with the constraints of a six-hour runtime and content limitations of network television.

That being said, there were still a handful of details and plot developments that couldn’t be included in the teleplay, and the 2020 miniseries smartly took the opportunity to differentiate itself from that original television production by making a point to include a number of them.

In addition to having more graphic content generally such as cursing, bloody violence, and nudity, the remake features a much more book-accurate depiction of dying from the deadly virus Captain Trips, and it’s as disturbing as it should be. The ingredient is the depiction of the symptom that Stephen King describes in the book as “tube neck” – a swelling of the glands that makes a person look like they have an inflatable around their throat. It’s a horrific element from the novel used effectively in the show.

As far as the individual members of the ensemble cast are concerned, the biggest pivot back to the book that the remake makes compared to the original is the inclusion of Rita Blakemoor (Heather Graham), the wealthy socialite whom Larry Underwood (Jovan Adepo) meets at the start of his story when he’s in New York. The 1994 miniseries combines Rita with Nadine as an amalgamation character (played by Laura San Giacomo), but she is brought back into the mix in the 2020 version and has basically the same tragic arc as her on-page counterpart.

The depictions of Fran Goldsmith, Nick Andros, and Randall Flagg  also see details from the book brought back into the mix that weren’t in the 1994 adaptation. Fran is established as being pregnant at the beginning of the story, unlike the previous adaptation, which implies that Stu Redman is the father of her child; Nick loses his eye as the victim of a hate crime while he’s in Arkansas, which is something that just doesn’t happen to the Rob Lowe version of the character; and Flagg has the power to levitate when he’s provided proper levels of worship, which is not something that the Jamey Sheridan version of the god-like antagonist is shown to do.

As far as full sequences are concerned, the only example of a restored scene is in Episode 4, “The House Of The Dead,” when Fran and Harold Lauder (Owen Teague) are ambushed by a psychotic misogynist named Garvey (Angus Sampson) who has already taken two women hostage – including future Boulder Free Zone spy Dayna Jurgens (Natalie Martinez). There are some significant changes made (Garvey has friends in the book and a larger collection of prisoners), but it’s still more than what’s included in the original adaptation.

How Paramount+’s The Stand Differs From The Book

It would take a lot more space than I have available in this column to go over every single element from Paramount+’s The Stand that is changed from the novel, and I can say that with full authority given that I tracked the alterations week-to-week when the show was originally airing. Writing a series of book-to-show comparison features, I was able to find seven or eight deviations from the source material in every episode (with the exception of the finale). I don’t have the word count here to go over the 58 differences I identified, so let’s just focus on the most significant ones.

The first is apparent from the first scene of the first episode, which features the body crew in the Boulder Free Zone clearing a church of corpses. While the novel is constructed relatively linearly, beginning before the start of the Captain Trips pandemic, the show opts for an alternate construction that is heavy on flashbacks – featuring the reformation of society in Colorado and then going back in time to reveal the paths the various key characters took to get there (and I’ll quickly add that Mother Abigail’s home in Nebraska is cut out of the story entirely, and Hemingford Home is made to be a retirement community in Colorado).

A consequence of this structure is that the show minimizes the cross-country journeys for a number of characters. On the protagonist side, those most affected are Nick Andros and Tom Cullen (Brad William Henke), who meet at a hospital in Arkansas – totally skipping over Nick’s time helping out at a police station after getting assaulted. Tom is also wholly shortchanged in the “third act,” as he is never put under a hypnotic spell, we see relatively nothing of his journey back to Boulder from Vegas, and he never has any of his dreams of Nick after his best friend’s death.

On the antagonist side, the biggest victim is Donald Merwin Elbert a.k.a. The Trashcan Man (Ezra Miller), whose entire journey to New Vegas is cut out (including his nightmarish time with the sick bastard known only as The Kid). Ultimately, Trashy’s entire narrative is changed, as he never sabotages military operations in Vegas and seeks out the nuclear weapon as an apology; instead, Flagg actively sends the psychotic pyromaniac after the weapon, and Trashcan Man ends up bringing it to the wrong place at the wrong time.

Lastly, I have to mention Stephen King’s coda, “The Circle Closes,” which sees the author extend the story beyond the book and follows Fran and Stu Redman (James Marsden) as they travel from Colorado back to Maine. After accidentally falling down a well, Fran has her own personal encounter with Randall Flagg, providing her a more satisfying conclusion beyond just the birth of her daughter, Abigail.

Is It Worthy Of The King?

Let’s start by getting this out of the way: if you’ve never read Stephen King’s The Stand or seen the 1994 adaptation, I’m not sure how one would make heads or tails of the 2020 miniseries. Because of the non-linear storytelling and the scattershot approach to character introductions, it doesn’t make it easy to become invested in the protagonists, and it doesn’t really find its groove until the fourth episode. I don’t imagine that the non-initiated would have the necessary patience with it, which I understand.

This, however, is a column ostensibly for Constant Readers, and with that perspective the miniseries is easy to digest… but it still has some major issues. The majority of the cast does a terrific job bringing their respective characters to life – with the standouts being Alexander Skarsgård, Jovan Adepo, Odessa Young, and the late Brad William Henke – but you get the sense that the filmmakers were overly scared of the idea of remaking and expanding upon what was already done in the 1994 miniseries, and that was a bad instinct. A wholly faithful interpretation of the book with modern special and visual effects and without network television censorship is what it should be, but it isn’t.

It feels kind of dumb to write this, but part of a story being an epic is its capacity to feature an expansive journey between its beginning and the ending, but this adaptation robs us of that by having the very first scene of the series take place after the Boulder Free Zone is up on its feet (ultimately rendering everything before it as a flashback). The miniseries feels like it’s in an unnecessary rush to get to the Boulder vs. Vegas conflict and as a result it shortchanges everything that comes before that point from the book.

Not counting the final episode because it’s original content, the 2020 adaptation of The Stand has about an hour and 30 minutes of extra runtime compared to the 1994 miniseries, and yet it feels like it covers less ground from the source material.

It can be called serviceable as an adaptation, but what does give it an important place in the King canon is that final episode. Given the fact that multiple versions of The Stand have gone into publication, there is a history of it as a fluid text or living document, and this adds to that legacy. The author was right in his assessment that the book doesn’t give Fran Goldsmith the opportunity to make her own stand, despite her essential role in the story, and that’s what is provided with his 2020 coda. The next time I read the novel, I’ll certainly plan on following up the experience with a rewatch of “The Circle Closes.”

How To Watch Paramount+’s The Stand

To start with the obvious, a Paramount+ subscription gives you access to all nine episodes of the miniseries (and you can even check out a few bonus featurettes that are included). It isn’t an exclusive, however. In addition to being on Blu-ray – a key piece for any Stephen King collection – the full show is available for digital purchase at online outlets including Amazon, Google Play, Vudu, and Apple.

Moving into the year 2021, Adapting Stephen King will be staying in the CinemaBlend Streaming section next week to take a close look at Pablo Larrain’s Lisey’s Story on Apple TV+ – the most recent adaptation that King himself scripted. Look for my column on the site on Wednesday, and click through the banners below to discover all of the previous editions.

Going back to 1976, 34 of Stephen King’s novels have been adapted in live-action – and that doesn’t even include the large number of short stories and novellas that have been turned into movies and serials. Some, like The Stand and IT, had to spend a few years in development as filmmakers figured out how to approach the material (and that goes for both Hollywood incarnations of each title), but eventually they were brought to life. As prolific as King is, more of his books have been adapted than those that haven’t.

Sadly, the terrific novel Revival is one of the works that currently exists in the latter group instead of the former – albeit not for lack of trying. Since 2014 when it was first published, there have been multiple attempts made to turn the story into a movie, but as of yet nobody has cracked the code.

So what is it about the material that makes it so hard to adapt? Who has been trying to adapt it? And what does the future hold? We’ve built this feature to talk out all of those questions and more – but first let’s dig a bit into what Revival is about and why it would make excellent source material for a film.

What Stephen King’s Revival Is About

Revival introduces readers to Jamie Morton just shortly after his sixth birthday in the year 1962. While outside playing, the boy meets a stranger named Charles Jacobs – a young man who has recently moved to the small town in Maine with his wife and son to become the local church’s new minister. Jamie quickly becomes charmed by the preacher, particularly enthralled by Jacobs’ personal fascination with electricity, and his relationship with Jamie and his family is only enhanced further when he is able to pull off a medical wonder by helping Jamie’s brother regain the ability to speak after a skiing accident.

As a child, Jamie’s time with the man is short-lived, as Jacobs denounces God and Christianity after his wife and son are macabrely killed in a terrible auto accident (leading to him being ostensibly run out of town) – but the protagonist eventually comes to think of the ex-minister as his “fifth business” – a character in the movie of life who repeatedly enters and exits the story.

Growing up to become a musician and heroin addict, Jamie meets Jacobs again as an adult at a state fair, and with the use of the man’s “special electricity” he is ridded of his dope habit… but in the aftermath he begins to experience peculiar side effects. While doing some research, he discovers that other recipients of Jacobs’ “magic” have had strange issues as well, and he begins to wonder about both the source of the remarkable power, and his Fifth Businesses’ motivations. He eventually learns the truth in what is one of the most disturbing, grim, horrifying, and devastating endings that Stephen King has ever committed to paper.

• Buy Stephen King's Revival at Amazon. 

The Attempts At Adapting Stephen King’s Revival Thus Far

It took about a year-and-a-half after the publication of Revival for a movie to get in the works. In February 2016 it was announced that The Fault In Our Stars director Josh Boone was developing a spec script adapting the book – with Stephen King himself giving the potential project his stamp of approval, according to Deadline.

The project gained speed quickly, with Josh Boone hoping to start production within the year, and it even attracted big name talent. Samuel L. Jackson, who plays supporting parts in Stephen King adaptations 1408 and Cell, was lined up to play Charles Jacobs shortly after the movie was announced as being in development. Sadly, the film ended up in development hell, and never found an exit.

About three years later, the idea of a Revival movie was, for lack of a better word, revived. Prior to the release of Doctor Sleep, writer/director Mike Flanagan teased that he was “talking actively” with Stephen King about making a third adaptation of the author’s work (having previously made 2017’s Gerald’s Game), and in May of 2020 it was revealed that said work was Revival.

Depressingly, the project didn’t make it to New Year’s Day 2021 before falling off the vine. On December 23, 2020, Mike Flanagan announced during a podcast appearance (which also had Josh Boone on) that he was no longer developing the movie – instead moving on to make the Netflix miniseries Midnight Mass and the upcoming shows The Midnight Club and The Fall Of The House Of Usher.

What Makes Stephen King’s Revival So Hard To Adapt

At 403 pages, Revival isn’t one of the longest novels that Stephen King has written (The Stand, for example, is nearly three times its length), but it has significant scope, and that’s evidently been the principal issue that cropped up when Josh Boone and Mike Flanagan were trying to trying to properly and faithfully adapt it.

Making a movie with a narrative that is set over the course of multiple decades and in locations all around the United States is both not a simple and (more importantly) not a cheap thing, and that’s a major roadblock that the iterations of Revival ran into as they were being developed. On top of that, the utterly disturbing conclusion requires a visual effects budget of some magnitude, and anything less than complete adherence to the source material would do the book a disservice.

During the aforementioned podcast appearance with both Josh Boone and Mike Flanagan, the two filmmakers commiserated about their shared difficulty bringing Revival to the big screen and how they stepped on the same landmines while working on their respective visions. Boone put it most succinctly when he said,

The two writer/directors are clearly of the mind that if Revival is going to become a movie, it should be the best possible version of itself and not be compromised. As much as Stephen King fans may want to see an adaptation get made, it’s impossible not to appreciate that sentiment.

What The Future May Hold For A Revival Movie

As things stand, an adaptation of Revival is not presently in the works, and it’s easy to be pessimistic given the way things have gone for the idea in the last six years. That being said, there is always reason to have hope – and that’s primarily generated from the fact that Stephen King will likely forever have cachet in Hollywood.

There are currently over a dozen projects in the works based on King’s books – some of them remakes, some of them based on untouched material – and while Revival isn’t among them, that could very well change tomorrow. If any of the upcoming adaptations end up being an IT-sized megahit, we could start seeing every studio try and throw as much money as they can at King-related projects. In that scenario, Revival could be a prized tome and get made with the budget it deserves.

We’ll have to wait and see if it ever ends up being turned into one of the greatest Stephen King movies ever made. For now, Constant Readers can be satisfied that it’s one of the greatest books that the author has written.

Earlier this year Stephen King fans were blessed with an awesome piece of news. After teasing in late 2019 that he was developing an adaptation to follow-up Gerald's Game and Doctor Sleep, Mike Flanagan was officially revealed to be working on a big screen version of Revival – one of the best books in King's bibliography. Constant Readers have spent the last seven months imagining what the project could be, but now we are saddened to report the news that the movie isn't moving forward.

Mike Flanagan was recently a guest on the podcast The Company Of The Mad, and it was while talking with Josh Boone (co-creator and executive producer on the new The Stand miniseries on CBS All Access) that the writer/director let slip that his version of Revival is dead. The news came up organically, as it was a part of a story Flanagan was telling about the first time that he had the chance to communicate with Boone:

First published in 2014, Revival tells the story of Jamie Morton and his nearly lifelong relationship with a man named Charles Jacobs – who begins the novel as the minister at Jamie's local church. When Jacobs is struck by horrible tragedy, his life changes forever, and it leaves an indelible imprint on the protagonist. As Jamie grows up, dealing with issues all his own, he finds himself encountering his old minister multiple times, and each time they connect he learns more about strange experiments that Jacobs conducts that are fueled by an obsession with electricity.

The story begins in 1962, but it spans multiple decades, and features a mind-splitting finale that will shock even the most hardcore Stephen King fans. Unfortunately, properly translating it for the big screen is something that requires a lot of money, and that's the prime reason why Mike Flanagan's goal to make a Revival movie ended up flatlining.

Discussing his own time trying to adapt the book, Josh Boone mentioned that he had stars interested in being a part of the production, but while figuring out the logistics he discovered that the project would require too big a budget to be made properly in modern Hollywood. As it turns out, this was the exact same issue that Mike Flanagan discovered during his own behind-the-scenes journey with the material. Said the filmmakers,

Fortunately, Josh Boone didn't just leave that tease hanging there, as he actually namedropped one of the stars he had lined up. Boone added,

Samuel L. Jackson would have been a fascinating pick to play Charles Jacobs. Not only does he possess the emotional power needed for that particular part, but Josh Boone seems to suggest that his version would have had the same actors play the two leads throughout the film, and Jackson is an actor who very recently participated in a blockbuster where de-aging movie magic was a massive part of the equation. That being said, Captain Marvel had a way bigger budget than any adaptation of Revival could ever have, so it's not overly surprising that approach didn't work out.

If you haven't read Revival, you absolutely should – despite the fact that it may be a minute before we get to see a big screen version of it get made. Also on the bright side, there are a number of Stephen King adaptations that are currently in the works, and you can find a rundown of all of them right here. As for Mike Flanagan, we'll just keep our fingers crossed that one day somebody hands him the keys to The Dark Tower.

By the time Josh Boone’s The New Mutants arrived in theaters this past August, morale surrounding the release wasn’t exactly high. The film had seen its release date pushed a ridiculous number of times (admittedly sometimes due to factors that had nothing to do with the production), and it didn’t exactly inspire confidence that 20th Century Studios was willing to put it on the big screen when most big screens around North America were closed. Then the reviews came out from professional critics who had to buy tickets for the show, and they weren’t exactly brimming with positivity – with CinemaBlend’s own Sean O’Connell describing it as, “A simplistic, unimaginative, low-budget blip on the comic-book radar that neither hinders nor furthers the superhero conversation.”

But you know what? With appropriately lowered expectations, it’s actually better than you might think.

With The New Mutants now available on digital and various physical formats, I finally had the chance to watch the movie this past weekend, and while I’m not here to tell you that it’s the most underrated X-Men franchise title or even that it’s a good film, I will stand up for the fact that it does have redeeming qualities and isn’t a total write-off. It boils down to four specific highlights, starting with…

The Female Characters Are Serviced Well

If you’re a big fan of Cannonball or Sunspot from the comics, you will be disappointed by their roles in The New Mutants, as the film mostly keeps them on the sidelines and doesn’t provide them with much in the way of depth – but the primary reason for that is because the movie is far more interested in the female members of the cast, and it legitimately services them well.

Maisie Williams delivers the best performance in the ensemble as Rahne Sinclair, delivering an emotional turn heavy with the weight of her character’s traumatic past. Her pairing with Blu Hunt is actually great, with their romance given proper prominence and feeling earned. Anya Taylor-Joy has arguably the most complicated role to play, as Illyana Rasputin is a character who doesn’t really care if you like her, and it really makes you not like her. That may seem like a negative, but it works well with the story being told and the dynamics between the core group.

It’s Twist Is Actually A Surprise

The thing that I was personally dreading most in The New Mutants was the twist that I just knew was coming. All of the trailers built up this mystery with characters trying to understand why things are getting so freaky in the converted mental hospital, but, like anyone familiar with Dani Moonstar from the comics, the solution seemed obvious to me. Her mutant power is the ability to bring anyone’s nightmares to life, and given that she was shown to be the new arrival at the facility it was obvious that she was the reason for everything going crazy.

As it turns out, this is a minor twist that is included in the film, planted for those unfamiliar with the source material, but it’s not the only twist that it sports, and I will say that I didn’t see the second one coming. I won’t spoil what it is here because the whole point of this feature is to encourage you to at least give The New Mutants a try, and ruining the ending would be counterproductive, so just take my word that you may find yourself legitimately surprised as the narrative moves into its third act.

The Demon Bear Looks Great

Toward the end of its run, the X-Men franchise attempted to bring a more “microbudget” approach to the comic book genre in contrast to all of the big blockbusters – and The New Mutants is most definitely and very clearly a part of that program. Save for the opening sequence and a waking nightmare experienced by Charlie Heaton’s Sam Guthrie, the movie takes place in and around a single location, and the biggest number of characters featured in any given scene is six. It’s something that is very much part of the experience watching the film, as it definitely feels inexpensive, but for what it’s worth, there is some cool CGI magic whipped up in the form of the villainous Demon Bear.

It can sometimes be hard to make giant, ghostly villains play as a visual threat, but the Demon Bear in The New Mutants is a vicious-looking creature and is effectively utilized in the movie’s biggest scenes. I don’t know if the quality is an extension of the extra time the production was given as the release date kept getting pushed back, but if so, it would be a silver lining.

It’s Leagues Better Than Dark Phoenix, Making It A Better End Note For The X-Men Franchise

Last year, the main X-Men series came to an end with Dark Phoenix, and it was most definitely a whimper instead of a bang. Clearly retooled and poorly plotted, the blockbuster is a total mess and represents the nadir of the entire franchise. It was a hard pill to swallow given the preceding important 19 year legacy that totally changed the world of comic book movies, but there is now a positive way to look at things: while the X-Men series may have ended with the worst feature in the run, at least The New Mutants is an improvement and leaves a better taste in your mouth in the aftermath of the cinematic universe.

A franchise not ending with its worst chapter is hardly a badge of honor to be prominently displayed, but it is something. The New Mutants is a far better and more entertaining movie than Dark Phoenix, and that’s said while also simultaneously recognizing that it’s also not very good itself.

Due to theater closures and poor word of mouth, audiences didn’t flood screenings of The New Mutants, but now that it is available to watch from the comfort of one’s own home you may want to give it a shot. There’s no threat that it will surpass X2: X-Men United, Deadpool, or Logan as your favorite X-Men movie, but you may also discover that it is way better than its reputation suggests.

Speculation surrounding Marilyn Manson’s involvement in CBS All Access' The Stand miniseries circulated for months before it became clear the shock rocker isn't involved. The singer was initially rumored to be playing the role of the Trashcan Man in the upcoming adaptation of Stephen King’s post-apocalyptic 1978 novel, which was debunked by Ezra Miller's shocking first look as that very character. Now, The Stand's executive producer Josh Boone personally addressed the Manson rumors to set the record straight.

While conjecture suggested that Marilyn Manson had previously filmed footage for The Stand, he was reportedly never actually up for the role of the Trashcan Man — a role that was officially offered to (and accepted by) Fantastic Beasts franchise actor Ezra Miller. However, the rumors did have some grain of truth to them. According to Josh Boone, Manson was approached about playing The Kid, a minor antagonist from the unabridged version of Stephen King's novel. Here’s what The New Mutants director told EW:

Well, there you have it! While Josh Boone would have welcomed Marilyn Manson’s involvement on The Stand, it turns out the Grammy-nominated musician never filmed any scenes for the role at all. It is definitely unfortunate that Manson’s schedule, combined with the series’ limited budget, meant that neither he nor The Kid could make the cut.

Television productions are tricky and complicated to put together, so not everything Josh Boone & Co. hoped to include made it into the series. Of course, The Kid isn’t very essential to the main narrative, so his absence won’t make that much of a difference. However, it would’ve been pretty cool to have seen Marilyn Manson take on the role, since it's high time he showed up in a Stephen King adaptation. Better luck next time, I suppose.

All that said, it's also a shame that Marilyn Manson and Shooter Jennings' cover of The Doors’ “The End” won’t be making it into The Stand. Manson confirmed that he'd recorded the song for the upcoming series all the way back in July of 2019, so it’s a bit disappointing that viewers won’t get to hear it at any point in the show. Here's hoping that Josh Boone fulfills his dream to work with the goth singer at some point again in the future. (Manson had a voice role in The New Mutants.)

The Stand is scheduled to premiere on Thursday, December 17 on CBS All Access. The miniseries will consist of nine episodes that will air weekly. For more on what to watch in the meantime, be sure to check out our fall TV premiere guide and our 2021 winter and spring schedule.

Audiences have been waiting a long time to see The New Mutants, and it’s finally here! (Not everywhere but it’s playing in actual theaters, I swear!) It's been a long road for the X-Men spinoff, most often characterized by its wild amount of delays and behind-the-scenes changes amidst the Fox franchise handing the mutant keys over to Disney. Paired with the release of the film Friday, the comic’s co-creator shared his thoughts about Josh Boone’s superhero film, and he was majorly disappointed.

Bob McLeod initially took to his Facebook account to share his perspective on The New Mutants, a title he created with Chris Claremont in the ‘80s. The artist shared that he was at first “excited” to hear about the movie and loved the horror aspect being brought to the film. But once Josh Boone started to make changes to character’s looks, including ditching Dani Moonstar’s braids, Rahne Sinclair’s spiky red hair and the “white-washing” of Roberto da Costa. He went on to say director Josh Boone “erased” everything he contributed to his character designs. And to further put salt on his wounds, he learned his name is spelled incorrectly in the credits.

One day after his comments, Bob McLeod is pulling back a little bit after they quickly went viral. In his words on Twitter:

McLeod is clearing the air, admitting he has not yet seen the movie and cannot judge the quality. However, he did want to express his dissatisfaction with how the characters were adapted to the screen. Josh Boone has been under fire for white-washing a number of characters in the film, including Henry Zaga’s Sunspot, who is played by a Brazilian actor. However, in the comics he is a biracial character of Afro-Brazilian descent and dark-skinned. McLeod expanded on this point too:

For context, here is Sunspot’s look in the comics next to The New Mutants actor, Henry Zaga:

It’s certainly an important issue to discuss, but Bob McLeod hopes it won’t be at the expense of Henry Zaga. The New Mutants co-creator closed out his comments by getting to the root of his disappointment here:

It certainly doesn’t help that Josh Boone has been sitting on this movie since it wrapped in 2017, giving the filmmakers ample time to spell-check its names. The new release certainly has roots in Bob McLeod’s work, though as he notes the movie is based on the 1990 Demon Bear Saga, illustrated by Bill Sienkiewicz. Overall, he has gripes with the movie but asks “explosive” fans to calm down.

The New Mutants is in select theaters now. Check out CinemaBlend’s review here and check out what other critics have to say about the Marvel flick. Stay tuned with us for more news on upcoming releases.

The X-Men franchise ran for nearly two decades before the main franchise ended with Simon Kinberg's Dark Phoenix. But there's one mutant-centric story that is just now arriving in theaters: Josh Boone's The New Mutants. The genre bending spinoff has been delayed countless times over the years, with fans eager for the horror-infused superhero flick to finally be released. The movie has a same-sex love story at its center, and now Boone has spoken out against the "embarrassing" representation in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.

The past few years have seen the entertainment world engage conversations about representation both behind and in front of the camera. There have been calls for diversity, with plenty of franchises taking significant steps forward. While the Star Wars franchise featured more women and people of color, some fans took umbrage with an obligatory blink-and-you'll-miss-it kiss in The Rise of Skywalker between two same-sex background characters. The New Mutants director Josh Boone recently spoke to this subtle nod in Episode IX, calling it the "most embarrassing" version of representation. As he explained,

Well, that was honest. It looks like Josh Boone isn't a fan of the very brief moments of LGBT representation in projects like the Star Wars franchise. Because while The New Mutants will feature a same-sex love story and organically explore two characters' connection, The Rise of Skywalker instead made it a very brief cameo.

Josh Boone's comments to TooFab show how strongly the filmmaker feels about LGBT representation in the media. Comic book movies are particular popular, and therefore making sure that audiences (especially young people) see themselves on screen in this matter is all the more powerful. The New Mutants will feature a love story between Maisie Williams' Rahne and Blu Hunt's Dani, as the two young characters bond in isolation.

Of course, that quick moment in The Rise of Skywalker still got plenty of press, as well as a fair amount of backlash. Avengers: Endgame had a similarly brief moment of LGBT representation, with Joe Russo's cameo as a gay man living in a post-snap world. While these were steps forward, The New Mutants will break new ground with its love story.

The New Mutants has been a long time coming, and we've seen a variety of delays across the years. Principal photography ended back in 2017, with the first teaser capturing the attention of the general public. Unfortunately, the movie's release date was pushed back four separate times. The first two were to ensure it wouldn't conflict with Deadpool 2 and Dark Phoenix respectively, while Fox's merger with Disney Fox and the COVID-19 pandemic brought two more delays.

But the movie is finally hitting theaters, marking one of the first projects to arrive in months. Russell Crowe's Unhinged had that honor, but The New Mutants and Tenet will offer more projects to the newly reopened theaters. Of course, availability is limited depending on your location.

The New Mutants is in theaters today. Be sure to check out our 2020 release list to plan your next movie experience.

While comic books are filled with plenty of characters who have completely straight-forward and easy-to-grasp origins, they are balanced out by the creations who wind up being impressively complex, with backstories that are deeply rooted within multiple decades-worth of canon. These particular individuals can prove to be quite the challenge for filmmakers trying to adapt them into a live-action medium – and Illyana Rasputin a.k.a. Magik is a perfect example. Soon we will be seeing the sword-wielding hero make her feature debut played by Anya Taylor-Joy in the film The New Mutants, but fans shouldn’t expect her to be a carbon copy from the page, as writer/director Josh Boone has confirmed that the production needed to make some simplifications to her biography.

This was one of the many topics I discussed with the filmmaker last week when I had the chance to interview him about the latest Marvel adaptation hitting theaters. We spent time talking about each of the main characters on the titular team, and while talking about Magik the main point of conversation was about how convoluted her origin in the comics is, and how she had to be simplified to a certain extent in The New Mutants. Check out Josh Boone’s comments by clicking play on the video below:

So who is Illyana Rasputin a.k.a. Magik? For starters she is the younger sister of Piotr Rasputin a.k.a. Colossus (best known to movie fans from both Deadpool and Deadpool 2), and she possesses a mutant gift that allows her to generate teleportation discs, but that’s the least of what’s confusing about her origin story. Born in Russia, she was kidnapped by a supervillain and brought to America at a young age, but didn’t stick around very long given that she was lured to an alternate dimension known as Limbo by a demon named Belasco. In order to try and free himself so that he can try and conquer Earth, Belasco needs to corrupt her soul, however, she is able to eventually turn the tables on him and escape after 10 years. Adding to the strangeness, when she returns to her own reality she discovers that no time has passed even though she is a full decade older.

Getting all of that information into even a solo movie about a comic book hero would be difficult, let alone a team feature, so when it came time to adapt Magik for The New Mutants Josh Boone had to get a bit creative. Discussing the backstory, the filmmaker explained that the goal was to translate the source material as best as possible, but added that the process required making some significant changes and omissions. Said Boone,

Ultimately, the struggle is really the same as any comic book character being translated to the big screen, only a bit more extreme. Almost every hero adapted has seen at least one part of their legacy from the page changed for the sake of clarity, and some require more work than others. Magik happens to be a case where there was a lot of work needed, but hopefully she will still end up being the heroine that fans recognize.

It’s a push and pull that is a part of every adaptation, and Josh Boone continued by using another character to explain why certain changes are so crucial – specifically one from the comics who was raised in an ancient Roman society ruled by a powerful witch deep in the Amazon rainforest:

As for precisely how Magik’s origins have changed, fans can find out the full story this weekend, as after multiple delays over the last three years The New Mutants is finally hitting theaters. In addition to Anya Taylor-Joy, the film also stars Maisie Williams, Blu Hunt, Charlie Heaton, Henry Zaga, and Alice Braga, and follows the titular team of young heroes as they work to both try and harness their special individual powers and also face off against a malevolent spirit known as the Demon Bear. Check it out for yourself on the big screen, and be sure to stay tuned here on CinemaBlend as our coverage of the long-awaited movie continues.

While comic book movies have the tendency to showcase superpowers as exciting and cool, Josh Boone’s The New Mutants takes a bit of a different tactic in telling its story. This is a movie featuring a bunch of teens who not only possess very dangerous gifts, but have also proven ineffectual in harnessing them, resulting in deaths. Sam Guthrie a.k.a. Cannonball is a perfect example of this, as losing control for him means generating energy from his legs and rocketing around uncontrollably – which is why it makes all the sense in the world that the film’s writer/director found himself referencing one of the great Masters of Horror in the development of the character.

Specifically, if you watch Charlie Heaton's performance in the movie and get hints of Charlie from Firestarter and Carrie from Carrie from the works of Stephen King, you should know that’s not an accident.

Last week, Josh Boone and I had a chance to bond via a video interview over our shared loves of both Marvel and Stephen King, and the subjects merged in an excellent way when the topic of conversation turned to The New Mutants’ depiction of Cannonball. You can watch the segment of our discussion by clicking play on the video below.

All of the members of the titular team in New Mutants are dangerous, but Sam Guthrie is a particularly special case given that his particular “gift” involves, explosive power, speed, and range. He essentially turns into a human rocket, decimating everything that gets in his very-undefined path, and while he himself is invulnerable while shooting around at high velocity, he can get very hurt when he’s trying to stop.

Not having the ability to manage his mutant abilities leads Sam to be afraid of what he can do, and helping absolutely nothing are the memories he has of the destruction that he’s done in the past. Said Josh Boone,

For those unfamiliar with the Stephen King books, both feature young characters who are to an extent victims of their own natural abilities. Carrie from Carrie (as previously portrayed in movies by Sissy Spacek and Chloe Moretz), can move objects with her mind and sees her powers slowly emerge following years of horrible abuse both at home and at school. Charlie in Firestarter (who is played by Drew Barrymore in the 1984 adaptation) has pyrokinesis and carries incredible guilt for accidents in the past.

Continuing, Josh Boone explained that he used these books as reference points to access the mentality of Sam Guthrie and provide him with a certain perspective:

The details of what happened to Sam Guthrie and the trauma he experienced prior to being hospitalized are being kept a secret for now, but it won’t be too much longer until audiences can find out by seeing The New Mutants in theaters.

If you want to watch my full interview with Josh Boone, head over to the CinemaBlend YouTube channel and check it out.

Co-starring Maisie Williams, Anya Taylor-Joy, Henry Zaga, Blu Hunt, and Alice Braga in addition to Charlie Heaton, The New Mutants – after several delays – is finally hitting theaters were possible this weekend. If you can check it out safely, do so, and then be sure to head back to CinemaBlend for more of our coverage of this long-awaited movie.

Josh Boone’s The New Mutants has taken a seriously long journey to see the light of day. It was about three years ago that the movie was shot up in Medford, Massachusetts with plans to be in theaters in the first half of 2018, but then various occurrences behind the scenes prevented that. Ever since then we’ve heard rumors about the feature undergoing certain alterations, the most significant saying that it was being changed to be more horror centric, but now that the film is finally coming out, the writer/director is setting the record straight by saying that the X-Men feature hasn’t really changed much at all since it first went into post-production.

I had the pleasure of video conferencing with Josh Boone last week to discuss his work on the new comic book movie, and while the majority of the conversation centered on the individual characters that make up the team, the interview began with real talk regarding how much the vision for The New Mutants has changed since it completed production back in 2017. You can watch that particular part of our talk in the clip below.

As most fans know, the biggest impediment to the release of The New Mutants has been the corporate deal known as the Fox/Disney merger, and the fact that all of the Marvel characters that used to belong to the former company now belong to the latter. The sale, which was completed in 2019, effectively put an end to the X-Men franchise that had been running since 2000… and that obviously left Josh Boone’s feature in a bit of an awkward place, what with it being the last title in the franchise to be completed.

This left the door open for a lot of rumors about The New Mutants delays, specifically those saying that there was need for big changes and reshoots, but that apparently wasn’t actually a significant part of the writer/director’s experience behind the scenes. Instead, Boone says that the biggest thing that’s been going on with the movie in the last couple of years is that nothing has been going on, and that the film was effectively waiting for the dust to clear from the merger before post-production work continued to get it finished and ready for release:

While Josh Boone doesn’t specify the dates of the work, the explanation does cast some light that allows us to understand why The New Mutants got pushed back. If the visual effects work wasn’t being done until within this past year, it makes sense that the film missed its August 9, 2019 release date and why it was moved to April 3, 2020 instead. And obviously that release date would have stuck had it not been for the COVID-19 pandemic forcing the world to shut down and just about all movies to be delayed.

At the end of the day, Josh Boone says that The New Mutants is still the film that he set out to make when he became attached to the project back in 2015, and that the reality of the situation is that there has been little studio interference as far as the content of the film. The filmmaker sees it as a different concoction than what we’re used to seeing from typical comic book movies, but Boone seems proud of the work. Said the writer/director,

Starring Maisie Williams, Anya Taylor-Joy, Henry Zaga, Blu Hunt, Charlie Heaton, and Alice Braga, The New Mutants is being released exclusively in theaters this weekend – and this is really only the start of our coverage. We have plenty more stories from my interviews with the cast and director of the new Marvel movie coming your way here on CinemaBlend in the next few days, so be sure to stay tuned for all of that and more!

If you’re an X-Men fan who watched the special Comic-Con trailer for New Mutants that was released last month, you may have recognized a familiar silhouette fluttering around in one particular scene. At the 55 second mark, which features a showdown between Illyana Rasputin a.k.a. Magik (played by Anya Taylor-Joy) and the villainous Demon Bear, the footage reveals what is the first ever look at a live-action version of Lockheed – a fan-favorite alien dragon from the comics.

As one would expect, the tiny creature’s surprise appearance in the clip has inspired a whole lot of questions, but now director Josh Boone has provided some exciting answers about his role in the upcoming movie.

Yesterday afternoon I had the pleasure of interviewing the New Mutants director during the film’s virtual press day, and while our conversation touched on all five of the titular characters in the film, it was specifically while discussing Magik that Boone provided a bit more explanation for the presence of Lockheed. Discussing the need to simplify certain origin stories that are immensely complex in the source material, the filmmaker used the dragon as an example and explained how his backstory is going to be slightly different in the live-action take:

For those not familiar with the comics (and to expand on Josh Boone's brief summary), Lockheed was first introduced in 1983's Uncanny X-Men #166 during a story where the mutant team travels to an alien world that has been infested by a parasitic race called the Brood. While part of a what is a communal race, he possess a more individualistic attitude and after saving Kitty Pryde from a Brood attack, he stows away with her when the X-Men travel back to Earth. As noted by Boone, he then becomes Kitty’s sidekick – although the tiny dragon does also have some shared history with Magik is well. (In fact, Lockheed’s true first appearance is as a character in a bedtime story that Kitty makes up for Magik in Uncanny X-Men #153.)

Clearly The New Mutants is going to be primarily leaning into that, and hard. While apparently staying true to the spirit of Lockheed’s origins, the alien backstory is going to be altered to tie in with Illyana’s history and abilities – which involves a connection she has to an alternate dimension referred to as Limbo and her power to create portals that allow her to enter and exit (which appears as a form of teleportation to observers). Boone explained,

It won’t be long now until fans actually get to see this live-action version of Lockheed, as after multiple delays The New Mutants is finally almost here. Starring Maisie Williams, Charlie Heaton, Alice Braga, Blu Hunt, and Henry Zaga in addition to the aforementioned Anya Taylor-Joy, the new film finally will be hitting theaters on August 28th. Between now and then, be sure to stay tuned here on CinemaBlend, as we’ll have a lot more stories for you from my interview with Josh Boone!

Josh Boone's The New Mutants has had a uniquely difficult road to theaters. After wrapping production back in 2017 and releasing a killer first trailer, all eyes were on the horror infused X-Men spinoff. Unfortunately, it's been delayed a whopping five times for a variety of reasons including Disney's acquisition of Fox and the current global health issues. The most recent shakeup puts The New Mutants in theaters in just weeks on August 28th, and it looks like the House of Mouse is going full speed ahead with those plans.

Since Disney acquired 20th Century Fox and its properties, fans have been wondering if/how The New Mutants would finally be released to the general public. While some moviegoers thought it might end up on Disney+ like Hamilton and Mulan, the latest reports indicate that it's still expected to have a theatrical run this month.

This news comes to us from Variety, with the outlet in touch with various movie exhibitors. While many theaters are still closed at the time fo writing, The New Mutants has continued ramping up its theatrical release, with pre-sale tickets becoming available on August 18th. There's obviously still time for the studio to reverse its course, but the current intention to release in just a few weeks is certainly a surprising one.

When theaters and public spaces began closing back in March, a ton of different movies were delayed. Many blockbusters like F9 have been pushed back a full calendar year, while others like Black Widow hoped to get into theaters by the fall. As for The New Mutants, it was shifted from March to August.

Despite its long gestation period, fans are still eager to see what Josh Boone and company have in store for The New Mutants. Audiences are eager to see how horror is used throughout the blockbuster, as well as the strong group of young actors. This includes Game of Thrones favorite Maisie Williams, Glass' Anya Taylor-Joy, and Stranger Things star Charlie Heaton.

It should be interesting to see if anything major changes in regards to theaters being open in the next few weeks; and as a result, how that'll affect The New Mutants' eventual release. The film industry is in unprecedented times, with studios being forced to either release movies straight to homes for less profit, or wait an unknown amount of months before the public feels comfortable going to the movies. Only time will tell.

The New Mutants will arrive in one way or another, and will mark the final chapter in 20th Century Fox's X-Men franchise. While the blockbuster won't feature any crossover moments, it's set within the same universe as Dark Phoenix and Deadpool. It will also be interesting to see how successful The New Mutants is, and if Disney decides to give Josh Boone a chance at a sequel.

The New Mutants is currently set to arrive in theaters on August 28th. In the meantime, check out our 2020 release list to plan your next movie experience.

Before shared universes became commonplace, there was 20th Century Fox's X-Men franchise. The main storyline came to an end with Dark Phoenix, but there is one spinoff that is still expected to arrive in theaters: The New Mutants. Josh Boone's horror-infused comic book flick has been delayed countless times over the years, and fans are eager to finally learn the contents of the blockbuster. And while we shouldn't expect members of the X-Men to pop up, the stories will still be connected.

Prior to being acquired by Disney, 20th Century Fox was going all-in on its mutant properties. In addition to the main X-Men installments, there was also massive success with Logan and the Deadpool movies. While The New Mutants likely won't include any major crossover moments, director Josh Boone recently shared one way that the X-Men will be included in the upcoming movie. When asked if there were going to be cross references, the filmmaker said:

Well, that seems pretty cut and dry. It looks like The New Mutants will indeed be set in the same universe as the X-Men franchise. And while we won't see characters like Mystique or Professor X appear in the long gestating blockbuster, there will be enough references to tie the properties together.

Josh Boone's comments to Slashfilm help to answer some of the long-standing questions currently looming over The New Mutants. After the spinoff was delayed yet again, some fans lost hope that we'd ever get to see the team of scrappy young heroes on the big screen. But Boone and company have only continued the The New Mutants' marketing campaign, including new footage that debuted as virtual Comic-Con.

The trailers for The New Mutants has helped to maintain fan anticipation for years, as the blockbuster looks like it'll have a unique take on the superhero genre. Comic book movies are everywhere, but few have leaned heavily on horror tropes. What's more, Josh Boone brought together a strong cast to make up the titular team of heroes, including Game of Thrones' Maisie Williams, Glass' Anya Taylor-Joy, and Stranger Things' Charlie Heaton.

It's currently unclear exactly when The New Mutants will hit theaters, and if the movie will make its current planned release date. But it does appear that the House of Mouse is intending the movie for a theatrical run, rather than streaming on Disney+. The movie's participation in virtual Comic-Con is definitely a hopeful step forward, so fans will just have to continue being patient for the time being.

The New Mutants is currently expected to arrive on August 28th. In the meantime, check out our 2020 release list to plan your next trip to the movies.

At long last, The Stand miniseries is coming to CBS All Access. First announced in 2014, the series, an adaptation of Stephen King’s 1978 novel, was originally being developed as a film. However, it evolved and was later envisioned as a ten-episode miniseries. Now, The Stand’s executive producer Josh Boone reveals the biggest advantage the new version has over the original miniseries.

New Mutants scribe and director Josh Boone has been trying to adapt Stephen King’s novel to live-action for some time and he has followed The Stand’s journey from Warner Bros. to CBS All Access over the years. It has been over two decades since the 1994 adaptation, and Boone cited a very clear advantage that the new miniseries has over the original. Here’s what he told /Film:

It sounds like The Stand is going to delve further into the dark content of its source material. The novel actually begins with a plague eradicating most of Earth’s population and, when framed within the context of our current health crisis, the miniseries may be hitting a bit closer to home than usual. That said, the fact that Josh Boone is fully embracing “the R-rated content” means that The Stand may more closely resemble the horror elements of the novel.

Perhaps yet another difference between the upcoming adaptation and its predecessor is that the CBS All Access series will consist of ten episodes versus the four episodes that 1994’s The Stand received. More episodes means there’s more time to flesh out some of the storylines that may have been cut from the original The Stand series and that’s always a good thing.

Not only will The Stand lean into its darker material, but it boasts an excellent cast that includes Dead to Me’s James Marsden, Star Trek: The Next Generation alum Whoopi Goldberg, and Big Little Lies actor Alexander Skarsgård among several other known actors. With Josh Boone also directing the premiere and finale episodes of the miniseries, as well as Stephen King writing the final episode, everything seems to have come together quite nicely.

The Stand does not yet have a scheduled premiere date, but it’s expected to debut on CBS All Access at some point this year. Stay tuned to CinemaBlend for updates. In the meantime, be sure to check out our 2020 fall TV premiere guide for even more series to watch.

Josh Boone’s The New Mutants film has followed a number of different paths on its way to finally playing for fans of the X-Men spinoff team. Beyond casting and production, the movie has had to go through multiple steps to get its audience’s attention, and then maintain it while they waited for the film to be released, properly. As the cast took the “stage” at San Diego Comic-Con@Home on Thursday, Boone and his actors sat down with CinemaBlend for an exclusive conversation about all things New Mutants.

The topic eventually circled around to the Director’s Cut of The New Mutants, and whether the movie had to shed scenes during its lengthy post-production process. Maybe it’s because my mind was swirling with the idea of a David Ayer cut of Suicide Squad, or the infamous Snyder Cut of Justice League, but I wondered if there will be an alternate cut of New Mutants waiting for fans when it reaches DVD and Blu-ray. I asked New Mutants director Josh Boone, and he told me:

That makes sense. One of the perks of The New Mutants being delayed as many times as it has been is that director Josh Boone has been given time to work on it, and make it the best possible version. That doesn’t always mean rewrites and reshoots. Sometimes it can just mean getting time away from the movie – in this case, a year where Boone didn’t have to watch it, but then returned with fresh eyes.

We also talked about how the trailers for New Mutants improved, from a special effects perspective. We’d gradually see more of the mutant team’s powers in action, especially when it came to Magik’s soulsword, and a peek into her home world of Limbo. I asked Boone if the effects will also be improved because of the amount of extra time the movie got in post, and he explained:

The Demon Bear is a villain lifted right off the pages of the early issues of the Marvel comic The New Mutants. It’s a terrorizing manifestation conjured by Dani Moonstar (Blu Hunt), and it will take the full power of the New Mutants team to bring this threat down.

The New Mutants stars Hunt, Maisie Williams, Charlie Heaton, Anya Taylor-Joy, Alice Braga and Henry Zaga. The movie is due to hit theaters (if they are open) on August 28.

After years of development and waiting, the new live-action miniseries version of Stephen King’s The Stand is almost here, and we couldn’t be more excited. As much appreciation as we have for the version from 1994 starring Gary Sinise and Molly Ringwald, the new CBS All Access show will be about four hours longer in total length, and thus have better opportunity to be a more direct adaptation and explore material that previously had to be cut. Thinking about this led us to consider what specific scenes from the book we would love to see in the upcoming streaming service program, and that thinking led us to the creation of this feature.

Taking into consideration key character growth, notable thematic showcases, and memorable scenes, we’ve picked out eight moments from Stephen King’s book that we want to see in CBS All Access’ The Stand. Let’s start with the most gruesome!

Execution At The TV Station

In the first half of Stephen King’s The Stand, it’s not only horrific to read about the way that the virus tears society apart, but also the way that humanity responds to the widespread panic. In the case of the latter, there are many examples explored, but none more utterly disturbing than what unfolds at a television station in Maine.

If the new miniseries really wants to drive home the terror of the lawless new world following the release of the Captain Trips virus, one perfect way would be to feature the scene where escaped prisoners perform 62 public executions on live television with a cheering audience. Of course, including this scene means it would also be necessary to include the revelation that story heroine Fran Goldsmith watches the broadcast believing that it must be fake because they don’t show that kind of stuff on television.

Nick Cares For A Dying Prisoner

Nick Andros is in the midst of what is a common experience in his life when he is first introduced in The Stand: being tortured by assholes because he is a deaf mute. This instantly earns the character great sympathy from the reader, but what ultimately forces you to really respect him unfolds shortly thereafter and is a must to include in the new miniseries. With the help of the local sheriff, he is able to incarcerate those that attacked him – but even when they are locked up and he has a chance to leave them to die he refuses – following his moral code and caring for them the best he can, even when they start showing clear symptoms of the super flu.

When the sheriff, the doctor, and basically everyone else in the small Arkansas town where Nick finds himself dies, the noble young man decides to stick around and provide his attackers with regular meals (even while receiving all kinds of verbal abuse). Without giving away too much, the section of the story ends in a really dark, pessimistic place, and it could be a great place-setter for the series in terms of establishing a grander tone in addition to giving one of the most important characters in the book a proper introduction.

The Trashcan Man Fulfills His Dream

Stephen King’s The Stand is a book that is features a number of odd ducks, but king of them all is Donald Elbert – better known to Constant Readers as The Trashcan Man. The pyromaniac/possible schizophrenic had a rather horrific life before Captain Trips wiped out most of humanity, but he finds real purpose in the aftermath, both because of his devotion to Randall Flagg, but also in his ability to realize a lifelong dream: blowing up his hometown’s oil depot.

With the CBS All Access adaptation likely getting a comfortable budget and all of the advances in modern cinema techniques, the explosion of the oil tanks could make for some exciting, showy material, but more importantly the sequence tells you something about the world of The Stand. While there are still good people breathing, post-pandemic Earth is also a place where a psychotic can roam free and blow up whatever they see fit, made even more scary by the influence provided by Randall Flagg (also serving as foreshadowing for another key boom later in the story that will surely be included).

Glen Bateman’s Sociology Dissertations

What happens to humanity when society falls apart? Philosophers have been asking that question for years, and The Stand has its own answer in the grand scheme of the story. What it also includes, however, are some fascinating discussions about the subject from the book’s resident sociology professor, Glen Bateman, and while the sequences perhaps wouldn’t be as flashy as an oil depot exploding, it’s still ground that the miniseries should absolutely cover.

Glen has multiple opportunities to dig into the nitty gritty of his dedicated study throughout Stephen King’s book, such as during his time on the road with Stu Redman and after reaching the Boulder Free Zone. His musings provide interesting base sociological context for the battle between those who follow Abigail Freeman and those who choose Randall Flagg, and it could provide for some meaty intellectualism if approach properly.

The Death Of Rita Blakemoor

To borrow the phrasing of a woman he has a one night stand with, Larry Underwood “ain’t no nice guy” when the super flu pandemic hits in The Stand, but that simply sets him up to have one of the strongest arcs in the book – one of personal redemption. Obviously that only happens if he has the motivation to change, though, which is why it’s key for the new miniseries to feature the death of Rita Blakemoor.

Larry meets Rita when he is Manhattan, and given that she is practically helpless in the post-pandemic world (ill-equipped both literally and emotionally) he decides to take responsibility for her and help her out. The problem is that he still suffers from Selfish Asshole Syndrome, giving him low tolerance for complaining and a short fuse. This attitude winds up contributing greatly to Rita’s sad fate – but her sad fate also proves to be the exact catalyst necessary for him to start to really change.

Tom Cullen Gets Hypnotized

Like most of Stephen King’s works, The Stand performs an interesting balancing act in its approach to reality and fantasy – and while that’s obviously the case on the macro scale, with both the pandemic and the supernatural battle between good and evil, it’s also true on the more character-based level. The perfect example of this is the attempt to hypnotize Tom Cullen so that he can perform as a sleeper agent and spy on the happenings in Las Vegas, which has its own strange consequences.

Even putting “God’s Tom” aside (the voice that emerges from his hypnotic state), Tom Cullen is certainly one of the sweetest characters in the book (M-O-O-N, that spells sweet!), and the decision to turn him into a double-agent presents one of the most challenging ethical dilemmas in the book. It’s material that is very much at the heart of what The Stand is, and it would be wonderful to see it explored in the new series.

As of right now we don’t currently know when The Stand miniseries is going to be available on CBS All Access, but stay tuned here on CinemaBlend for updates about the show, and if you wish to revisit Stephen King’s brilliant tome, it’s available in bookstores as well as on Kindle and in audiobook form.

Prior to cinematic universes and the popularity of the superhero genre, 20th Century Fox's X-Men franchise was in theaters. The mutant-centric property had a long run with a revolving cast of actors, but the studio's acquisition by Disney seemingly ended the main franchise with Dark Phoenix. But there's one X-Men movie that still hasn't hit theaters, Josh Boone's spinoff The New Mutants. The blockbuster has been delayed countless times over the years, but could it actually end up as a bonafide trilogy?

The New Mutants' fate was seemingly decided before its release, as the movie will be released after Disney already took ownership of 20th Century Fox. The movie has also been delayed so many times that it's unclear exactly how it'll perform once finally hitting theaters. But despite this, director Josh Boone still plans for a three-movie arc, which would form The New Mutants into a trilogy. As he recently put it,

Well, this is exciting. Because despite the main X-Men franchise coming to an end with Simon Kinberg's Dark Phoenix, Josh Boone is still hopeful that The New Mutants could succeed, and therefore inspire Disney to continue with the burgeoning franchise. Of course, we'll have to wait and see how the movie performs when it hits theaters at the end of August.

Josh Boone's comments to SFX Magazine (via Twitter) will no doubt help build anticipation for The New Mutants. Fans have been waiting years to see what Boone has up his sleeve for the horror infused superhero movie, eager to see a new type of comic book adaptation. And it turns out that his plans expand much farther than one movie.

The New Mutants has had a wild road to theaters, one that still feels uncertain. Josh Boone and the cast completed principal photography back in September of 2017, with plans for reshoots. But those reshoots never happened, as the movie was pushed back and the studio eventually became the property of Disney. The House of Mouse finally chose a new release date for April 2020, before eventually being pushed back to August. Of course, we'll have to monitor when theaters actually reopen safely.

As a reminder, you can check out the trailer for The New Mutants below.

Obviously the contents of The New Mutants are being kept under wraps, but it's exciting to hear that Josh Boone actually has plans for a full trilogy. Since the long-gestating blockbuster will see the titular group of superpowered teens meet each other and become a team, it would be interesting to see them grow as bonafide superheroes.

While the X-Men franchise is a wrap for now, fans would love to see some crossovers between The New Mutants and the Deadpool franchise. Anya Taylor-Joy's character Magik is actually the sister of X-Man Colossus, so there's a clear opening there. We'll just have to see exactly what Disney has in store for Marvel's mutants as time goes on.

The New Mutants is currently set to arrive in theaters on August 28th. In the meantime, check out our 2020 release list to plan your next trip to the movies.

Years before superhero movies and cinematic universes were commonplace, the X-Men franchise was up and running. Starting with the 2000 original movie, the mutants were never far from theaters, including seven main installments as well as the Wolverine and Deadpool movies. While Disney's acquisition of 20th Century Fox seemingly put the property to bed, there's another movie still set to hit theaters this summer: Josh Boone's The New Mutants. The movie has been delayed countless times since its wrapped filming, and a new report indicates that the horror-inspired comic book movie was originally going to include major members of the X-Men.

The New Mutants will introduce a new cast of young mutants, who are institutionalized for not being able to control their abilities. Some of them even have connection to the larger universe; Anya Taylor-Joy's Magik is actually Colossus' sister. And a new report indicates there was originally going to be some major X-Men cameos, before those plans were ultimately scrapped. Specifically for Professor X and Storm, played by James McAvoy and Alexandra Shipp.

This latest update comes to us from Twitter, reportedly coming from the newest issue of SFX Magazine. The publication revealed some new stills from The New Mutants, as well as some new information about the long-gestating comic book movie. Although the biggest revelation seems to be the original plans to include Professor X and Storm in a quick cameo.

The specifics of the planned cameo is unclear, but the idea of seeing the New Mutants alongside the X-Men is a concept that would have excited the many Marvel fans out there. Josh Boone's The New Mutants was reportedly set to be set within the same timeline as X-Men: Apocalypse, which would allow those characters to logically appear. But the movie was ultimately pushed back years in a series of unfortunate events, seemingly putting the kibosh on plans for that cameo appearance.

The New Mutants filmed back in 2017, shortly after the release of X-Men: Apocalypse a few years later. The cast of X-Men filmed a similar cameo in Deadpool 2, briefly appearing in the Mansion when Wade Wilson is complaining about never seeing any mutants besides Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead. It definitely would have been thrilling to see these young new characters crossover with the franchise? Perhaps the New Mutants will show up at Xavier's by the movie's end.

After being pushed back a number of times and 20th Century Fox being acquired by Disney, The New Mutants was finally going to hit theaters on April 3rd, without any of the planned reshoots. But theaters closed and prevented this from happening, once again delaying its released. But Disney has given the movie a new date for this August, allowing the final X-Men movie to top off the summer season.

The New Mutants is currently expected to arrive in theaters on August 28th. In the meantime, check out our 2020 release list to plan your next trip to the movies.

Before cinematic universes were commonplace, the X-Men franchise was bringing Marvel comic stories to life on the big screen. The franchise's main story ended when Dark Phoenix hit theaters, but there is one more mutant story that we've been waiting to see in theaters: Josh Boone's The New Mutants. The horror-inspired blockbuster has been delayed a number of times since its filming back in 2017, most recently due to theaters closing ahead of its planned release in March. Moviegoers have been anxious awaiting an update on the movie's upcoming release, and now it looks like The New Mutants might be gearing up for a Video on Demand release.

The New Mutants was one of the many movies to be pulled from its planned theatrical release, as movie theaters as a result of global health concerns. Fans have been wondering for years whether or not it might end up on streaming, depending on what made the most sense for Disney following its acquisition of 20th Century Fox and its properties. But surprisingly, the movie is seemingly available for pre-order on Amazon prime video.

At the point of writing, The New Mutants is currently listed for pre-order on Amazon for the price of $25.99. There's no release date listed, but this would seemingly be an indication that the movie would be heading to people's homes, rather than having a full theatrical release. In this case is would likely be available via video on demand, like Universal did with Trolls World Tour. Although right now the studio has made no official announcement regarding the future of Josh Boone's upcoming superhero flick.

If The New Mutants ends up going directly to homes through video on demand, it would be interesting to see how that decision ripples across the movie industry. There's an ongoing conflict between certain studios and theater owners regarding movies going directly to video on demand instead of their planned theatrical release. While most big blockbusters have been delayed a number of months in response to theaters closing, there have been a few exceptions along the way, most notably Trolls World Tour.

The price point currently listed of $25.99 might seem steep for a rental, but I assume this price is for digitally buying a copy of The New Mutants. Similar prices were seen when Birds of Prey arrived in homes early, before it was dropped and made available for rental. And considering that The New Mutants was a bonafide blockbuster with a presumably with a hefty budget. So if a theatrical run isn't possible, money needs to be made in other ways.

After being delayed a number of times over the years, The New Mutants finally got a new release date for March. Prior to that, many fans wondered if it could end up getting released on Disney+, since the House of Mouse had the control over the movie's distribution. Theaters closing was yet another obstacle in the way of Josh Boone's movie finally becoming available after all the years. So it would be exciting if the movie were to arrive via video on demand.

You can check out the latest trailer for The New Mutants below.

The New Mutants had a ton of buzz around it when the movie's first spooky trailer arrived years ago. With a fierce cast of young stars and a new take on the X-Men franchise, moviegoers were eager to see what the long gestating movie had to offer. Unfortunately, it was delayed countless times and reshoots never happened. But Josh Boone got to finish his movie as planned, although now it seems it might skip the theaters altogether. We'll have to see how the story progresses.

CinemaBlend will keep you updated on the latest news regarding The New Mutants as it becomes public. In the meantime, check out our 2020 release list to plan your next trip to the movies.

The New Mutants has been a long time coming, considering that it was originally supposed to hit theaters nearly two years ago. The title is but a remnant of Fox’s twenty-year X-Men franchise that will now be under Disney’s MCU umbrella moving forward. And, according to The New Mutants director Josh Boone, the teen-thriller will also feature “a beautiful love story” between two of the core female characters in the film.

A same sex romance will reportedly be present in The New Mutants between Game of Thrones star Maisie Williams and Blu Hunt. The director called the element of the PG-13 film ”sort of the spine and focus” of the character-driven elements of the X-Men flick. Williams also explained this element further with these words:

In the comic books, Rahne Sinclair has the power to transform herself into a wolf and Danielle Moonstar can create illusions and visions based on others’ emotions and worst fears, along with having the ability to speak with animals. The combination of Rahne being a part-time wolf and Dani’s unique ability to communicate with them makes for a strong bond between the characters amongst the larger group of teen mutants.

As Josh Boone also said to EW, he wanted to extend their connection from Marvel Comics and felt a romantic relationship between them was a plausible extension of their characters. The New Mutants director said he was inspired by Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s queer representation in the form of Alyson Hannigan’s Willow. He wanted to make the effort because mainstream movies haven’t quite caught up to the added representation on television which Buffy started to make moves toward years ago.

Maisie Williams clarified that the relationship between Rahne and Dani isn’t necessarily spoken about in The New Mutants, but she felt it was handled in a way that didn’t feel like a “gimmick.” In her words:

The LGBTQ community is understandably skeptical about announcements such as this following more recent more gimmicky depictions in Beauty and the Beast, Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker or Onward. Oftentimes queer representation is marketed in high-profile films and their sequences tend to be blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moments that don’t have much impact on the rest of the storyline.

Sadly, the release date of The New Mutants has shifted again due to coronavirus concerns. Disney announced earlier today that the movie’s planned April 3 release would be postponed along with those of Mulan and Antlers. It was also announced today that A Quiet Place, F9 and The Lovebirds would be delayed as well. Stay tuned here on CinemaBlend for more updates on The New Mutants.

Disney's acquisition of 20th Century Fox was major news, which had a rippling effect on various upcoming movies. Josh Boone's The New Mutants was one of those movies, and will be the final installment in the X-Men franchise as we know it. The movie was pushed back a number of times after the original trailer arrived back in 2017. But Boone recently revealed a way that the delays actually benefitted the long gestating blockbuster.

The New Mutants had its fair share of delays, as 20th Century Fox pushed the horror inspired superhero movies two separate times to avoid competing with Deadpool 2 and Dark Phoenix respectively. And when the Disney/Fox merger happened, it seemingly put Josh Boone's blockbuster in jeopardy. But The New Mutants is finally heading to theaters next month, and Boone recently explained one way it the delays helped the movie. When speaking about the editing process at the point of the delays, he said:

Well, that's definitely a silver lining. The years break between The New Mutants' original editing and completion might have been a logistical nightmare, but it also allowed Josh Boone and Knate Lee to come back with a fresh point of view. And in that way, it may have actually benefitted the quality of the mutant-centric movie. Talk about perspective.

Josh Boone's comments to EW help to peel back the curtain on The New Mutants' long road to theaters. The upcoming movie was largely at the mercy of 20th Century Fox's scheduling. And once Disney and Fox's deal was in motion, it further complicated things. But there's finally a light at the end of the tunnel, with Boone and company completing the movie before its theatrical run.

While The New Mutants didn't get any reshoots, Josh Boone was able to complete the upcoming blockbuster with his original vision. Despite rumors to the contrary, it'll be rated PG-13. So while horror will clearly have an influence on the movie, it wasn't made terrifying enough to garner an R rating. The newest trailers teased some of the more traditional comic book movie elements, especially for Anya Taylor-Joy's Magik.

X-Men fans are excited to see The New Mutants in theaters, following rumors that it could end up streaming after the Disney/Fox deal. Luckily the X-Men spinoff will be brought to audiences the way it was originally intended-- although the actors' aging put reshoots out of question.

The New Mutants is set to arrive in theaters on April 3rd. In the meantime, check out our 2020 release list to plan your next trip to the movies.

Next month’s cinematic calendar will include the release of The New Mutants, a movie that was originally scheduled to come out two years ago. For a long time, it was believed that the reason The New Mutants, which serves as the final movie of Fox’s X-Men franchise, was taking so long to arrive is because of planned reshoots. As it turns out, these reshoots never actually happened!

Although we already knew that the theatrical cut of The New Mutants only contained footage shot during principal photography, this is the first time we’ve heard that no additional footage was shot whatsoever. Evidently Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox sidelined the reshoots aspect of the production, as director Josh Boone explained:

So had the Disney/Fox merger not gone through, Josh Boone believes that The New Mutants would have done reshoots, like so many blockbusters do nowadays. Alas, this gigantic business deal, along with Disney’s continued focus on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, resulted in The New Mutants being delayed, eventually reshoots just wouldn’t work because the actors had aged too much, having first worked together back in summer 2017.

Josh Boone added to EW that there was “radio silence” for about a year where he and the rest of the cast and crew didn’t hear anything about what was next for The New Mutants. During that time, Boone finally got his adaptation of Stephen King’s The Stand off the ground as a limited series for CBS All Access, and shortly after that was officially announced, Boone was called back to finish editing The New Mutants.

When reports of The New Mutants reshoots first surfaced, it was said that the extra filming was being done to make the movie scarier. While that never came to pass, Maisie Williams, who plays Rahne Sinclair, a.k.a. Wolfsbane, is assuring fans that the movie hitting theaters is properly reflective of the original vision. In her words:

Maisie Williams also described The New Mutants as being very “thriller” and “dark” in its “honest” exploration of young mutants being trapped in a facility against their will. Joining Williams in the main cast are any Taylor-Joy as Illyana Rasputin, a.k.a. Magic; Charlie Heaton as Sam Guthrie, a.k.a. Cannonball; Blu Hunt as Danielle Moonstar, a.k.a. Mirage; Henry Zaga as Roberto de Costa, a.k.a. Sunspot; and Alica Braga as Dr. Cecilia Reyes.

It had also been reported that Antonio Banderas had been cast to play an unidentified villain appearing The New Mutants’ post-credits scene, which was among the planned scenes being reshot and originally featured Jon Hamm as Mr. Sinister. Since the reshoots never occurred, it’s unclear if Banderas is actually present in the movie, if we’ll see Hamm’s Sinister instead or if both men will be absent.

The New Mutants opens in theaters on April 3. Don’t forget to scan through our 2020 release schedule to figure out what other movies you plan to see this year.

It’s no easy task for a director to take on a blockbuster. Big-budget projects often come with massive expectations from audiences, and there’s a lot of studio money on the line too. With 2020 in particular, there’s a ton of filmmaking talent taking on these kinds of projects for the very first time. Bad Boys for Life directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah kicked things off in a big way with the record-breaking success of their action film, and there’s plenty of blockbuster debuts to go.

Get to know the directors helming giant movies for the first time in 2020. You might want to remember some of these folks:

Cathy Yan - Birds of Prey

Release Date: February 7

Back in 2017, Warner Bros took a chance on Patty Jenkins and she made history. The Wonder Woman director was the first woman ever to be given a project as big as the DCEU film was, and it became a phenomenon. Cathy Yan is following in Jenkins’ footsteps with Birds of Prey coming this weekend. She helmed her first feature just two years ago after writing and directing three of her own shorts. A little while after the Chinese-spoken Dead Pigs premiered at Sundance to positive buzz, Yan had coffee with Birds of Prey writer Christina Hodson, and it resulted in her becoming the movie's director.

Jeff Fowler - Sonic the Hedgehog

Release Date: February 14

Taking on the first live-action Sonic the Hedgehog movie as your directorial debut takes some serious fortitude, and Jeff Fowler was the man for the job. Back in 2004, his animated short Gopher Broke was nominated for an Oscar, and he worked on the animation for 2009’s Where the Wild Things Are. Other than that, he kind of came out of nowhere. Following the release of Sonic the Hedgehog’s first trailer, the design of Sonic was met with viral backlash. Fowler listened to fans and redesigned the character's features, and it looks like this will benefit Sonic’s success.

Dave Wilson - Bloodshot

Release Date: March 13

Another first-time director who comes from the visual side of moviemaking is the director of Bloodshot, Dave Wilson. He has long been the supervisor and director of creating trailers for video games at Blur Studios, including Mass Effect 2, various Star Wars games and Bioshock Infinite. Wilson also worked on Avengers: Age of Ultron as well and directed an episode of Netflix’s Love, Death & Robots last year. His first movie stars Vin Diesel and is based on Valiant Comics’ Bloodshot. The superhero is a biotech killing machine with a tragic backstory.

Josh Boone - The New Mutants

Release Date: April 3

Josh Boone is no stranger to a high-profile project. He directed the adaptation of the beloved teen romance novel The Fault in Our Stars back in 2014, which starred Ansel Elgort and Shailene Woodley. Made on a reported budget of just $12 million, the movie went on to make $307 million worldwide. That helped launch the two actors careers who are popular for their work in Baby Driver and Big Little Lies, respectively. His next project has had a troublesome time reaching the big screen since it was filmed two years ago, but it’s finally coming this spring. The New Mutants is a horror take on the X-Men property with the same name.

Cary Joji Fukunaga - No Time To Die

Release Date: April 10

Following 1917’s Sam Mendes' two-film stint in the James Bond franchise for 2012’s Skyfall and 2015’s Spectre, Daniel Craig’s final hurrah as 007 will be directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga. This filmmaker has shown promise to helm a big-budget movie for a few years. He had built up his resume as the filmmaker behind the latest adaptation of Jane Erye, the first season of HBO’s True Detective and one of Netflix’s first award contenders, Beasts of No Nation. Fukunaga was also the mind behind the script for 2017’s IT and Netflix’s Maniac. It’ll be exciting to see how he closes out Craig’s tenure as Bond.

Cate Shortland - Black Widow

Release Date: May 1

Believe it or not, the first Marvel movie to be directed solely by a woman is this summer's Black Widow. Captain Marvel technically was the first female director hire with Anna Boden, but she shared the responsibility with Ryan Fleck. Cate Shortland is an Australian filmmaker who started making her own short films in the late ‘90s. Throughout the years, she’s made a few critically-acclaimed small movies, including Somersault, Lore and Berlin Syndrome, but there’s no question that Black Widow is her most high-profile work to date.

Tony Cervone - Scoob!

Release Date: May 15

Another highly-anticipated feature-length animated feature to get a first-time director is Scoob! The Scooby-Doo property has been rebooted again and again, but it’s been some time since moviegoers could enjoy Shaggy, Velma and the gang on the big screen. Following a couple live-action films in the early ‘00s, Scoob! will take the franchise back to animation with a 3-D look. Tony Cervone has spent his career directing and producing television programs starring Tom & Jerry, Daffy Duck and Scooby-Doo. We’ll have to see how he does with Scoob!

Nia DaCosta - Candyman

Release Date: June 12

The horror genre has been finding a successful resurgence in recent years, especially with the help of Jordan Peele’s genius. Following Us, the acclaimed filmmaker has written a “spiritual sequel” to 1992’s Candyman. However, he’s stepping back from directing duties. In turn, Nia DaCosta gets to helm her first major feature film this summer. Last year, she was the director of the underrated crime-drama Little Woods, starring Lily James and Tessa Thompson. The upcoming Candyman will follow the eponymous character returning to the Chicago neighborhood from the original, but now it’s gentrified.

Chloé Zhao - The Eternals

Release Date: November 6

Not one, but two out of two Marvel movies in 2020 will feature the work of first time big-budget directors. Chloé Zhao is a Chinese filmmaker who also started making short films before moving to small indie films in Songs My Brother Taught Me and The Rider. The latter film was nominated for four Independent Spirit Awards, including a nod for her directing. Now she takes on one of Marvel Studios’ most ambitious projects yet with The Eternals. The movie stars including Angelina Jolie, Richard Madden, Salma Hayek, Gemma Chan, Kit Harrington and follows immortal heroes over thousands of years.

Paul Briggs And Dean Wellins - Raya And The Last Dragon

Release Date: November 25

Closing out the year, are first-time directors Paul Briggs and Dean Wellins, who will direct Disney’s next animated film, Raya and the Last Dragon. The animated movie will follow a re-imagined Earth inhabited by an ancient world. A warrior called Raya is on a quest to find the last dragon. Crazy Rich Asians’ writer Adele Lim is behind the script, and it will star Awkwafina and Cassie Steele. Both first-time directors have been working for Disney in the art and animation department for two decades. Briggs started on Hercules as an in-between artist, and Wellins was on the Gargoyles video game before working on the studio’s modern animated films.

Do you have faith in these new directors? Sound off in the comments!

Last year, the X-Men series that began all the way back in 2000 concluded with the release of Simon Kinberg’s Dark Phoenix – but technically we have not yet seen the X-Men franchise as a whole come to an end because of the forthcoming and long-delayed release of Josh Boone’s The New Mutants. While the horror movie doesn’t really have any specific connections to the events that audiences saw play out with mutants in past blockbusters, it is technically still a part of the universe… even though that universe doesn’t really exist anymore.

It makes for strange environment for the movie to be released in, but things weirdly could have been far more awkward, as early plans for the project actually saw The New Mutants feature much more definitive connections to everything going on with Professor X and his team, and even had a period setting to make that work.

This was a detail that Josh Boone openly discussed back in August of 2017 while talking to a small group of journalists on the set of The New Mutants – a group of which I was a part. It had been hinted at during other interviews that there were early plans for the movie to be set in the 1980s, and when the subject was brought up with Boone he explained how things were initially going to work with the film:

Simon Kinberg’s “own X-Men movie,” of course, was the aforementioned Dark Phoenix, but the big thing to focus on is the bit of namedropping of key X-Men characters. Had this early version of New Mutants remained intact as it made its way through development, this is a film that could have perhaps featured Alexandra Shipp’s Storm and James McAvoy’s Professor X (which would have been interesting if not just because Professor X was the leader of the New Mutants in Marvel Comics).

However, that version of New Mutants didn’t remain intact. So what happened? According to Josh Boone, the simple answer to that question is “X-Men: Apocalypse.” The Bryan Singer film got a poor reception from critics, and underwhelmed at the box office, and apparently that led the higher ups at 20th Century Fox to decide that the big problem was the fact that the movie was set in the 1980s.

This was something that Josh Boone had no qualms about mocking saying (Note: keep in mind, this quote was from years before the Disney-Fox merger was a thing),

As fans know, the X-Men series never really got to that place. While there may at one time have been plans after Dark Phoenix to have a blockbuster set in the 2000s, and then another set in the 2010s, they won’t be moving forward because of the Disney-Fox merger, which will eventually see new versions of classic mutants integrated into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Those who would have been excited to see those future X-Men movies may be sad, but in the big picture everything in this arena turned out alright for The New Mutants. Had the film featured stronger ties to the main X-Men series, releasing it now post-Dark Phoenix would have been very odd.

As it happens, Josh Boone also feels that taking those elements off the table helped the movie simply from a story perspective. He suggested that at first there was some unease about limiting the pool of characters that would potentially have a role to play in The New Mutants, but having that limitation wound up being a good thing as the script was reconstructed and he realized that there was an invitation to let the project stand on its own. Said Boone,

Written by Josh Boone and Knate Gwatney and based on the comics of the same name, The New Mutants brings movie-goers into the confines of a secret facility where young individuals with uncontrollable powers are given haven for their own protection. This includes Rahne Sinclair (Maisie Williams), who can transform into a wolf or human/wolf hybrid; Illyana Rasputin (Anya Taylor-Joy), who can teleport using magic rings; Sam Guthrie (Charlie Heaton), who can rcket through the air with thermo-chemical energy excreted from his skin; Roberto da Costa (Henry Zaga), who can manipulate solar energy, and Danielle Moonstar (Blu Hunt), who can create powerful illusions of a person's deepest fears.

After years of waiting, The New Mutants will soon be coming to a theater near you, set to be released on April 3rd (to see what else is coming your way, be sure to check out our 2020 Release Calendar). Stay tuned for more news and updates about the movie as we get closer to its spring release date, and be on the lookout for more stories from my time on the set of the film!

Nearly two years after The New Mutants was filmed, the teen horror movie starring X-men characters has finally been screened! The Fox-produced project has seen more than its share of delays and setbacks but it’s finally coming this spring and writer/director Josh Boone just watched it with his young cast. Check it out:

Josh Boone took to Instagram to share a special private screening he and all the “New Mutants” enjoyed together. As you can see, from left to right Blu Hunt, Maisie Williams, Charlie Heaton, Anya Taylor-Joy, Alice Braga and Henry Zaga are all throwing up excited hands over their big Marvel movie coming this April.

The New Mutants has a nice mix of familiar bright stars and newcomers. Maisie Williams is practically an acting veteran, since she’s spent the last decade playing Arya Stark on Game of Thrones. Next, she’ll take on wolf-hybrid Scot as Wolfsbane in the movie. Charlie Heaton had just come off the pop culture phenomenon of the first season of Stranger Things when he signed on for The New Mutants. Now Jonathan Byers will be playing Cannonball.

Another well-known actress among the cast is Anya Taylor-Joy, who found her breakout role in Robert Eggers’ The Witch in 2015 before starring in M. Night Shyamalan’s Split and Glass. The 23-year-old actress will play Magik in The New Mutants. Henry Zaga will play Sunspot and Blu Hunt is Danielle Moonstar – a mutant with the power to show people their greatest fears and wishes.

The New Mutants will center on Moonstar’s powers affecting each of the teens trapped in a secret facility as they are kept there by Alice Braga’s Dr. Cecilia Reyes for psychiatric monitoring. The movie was originally set to be released back in August 2018, but it has since been moved to February and then August 2019, before finally settling on an April 2020 date.

The movie was made in a completely different time for Fox, when they still had their own separate franchise going and had not yet been acquired by Disney. Now, Disney has all the rights to X-Men characters with the intention to reboot mutants into their MCU. So, The New Mutants is a bit of a random outlier to the rest of Marvel’s offerings. Especially since it looks like an origin story to introduce a larger franchise.

At one point, it was rumored Disney was “unimpressed” with The New Mutants when they acquired the studio. There were discussions about the film being thrown into a streaming service and just skipping out on a theatrical release.

The PG-13 movie has a teen horror feel to it that audiences haven’t yet seen from a movie about mutants before. A trailer for The New Mutants was recently finally revealed earlier this month with six million views in two weeks. Check it the movie in theaters on April 3, 2020!

Against all odds, The New Mutants seems as if it is finally going to see the light of day and on theater screens no less, not relegated to a streaming service. The final Fox X-Men film is set to release in April and despite the horror movie vibes and previous indications an R rating might be on the table, it will carry with it a PG-13 rating. While some might be disappointed by this news, The New Mutants illustrator Bill Sienkiewicz explains why the movie didn’t need to be rated R. Take a look:

Artist Bill Sienkiewicz illustrated Marvel’s The New Mutants in the 1980s during the run of writer and X-Men luminary Chris Claremont, so he knows a thing or two about the characters. According to Bill Sienkiewicz, The New Mutants film didn’t need to be rated R because director Josh Boone was able to make the film work and be what it needed to be, under the restrictions of a PG-13 rating.

The artist says that The New Mutants works as a PG-13 movie because of director Josh Boone and what he was able to do with it. Bill Sienkiewicz calls The New Mutants a scary film even though it has a PG-13 rating. It’s not scary ‘for a PG-13 movie’, it’s a scary movie that just happens to be rated-PG-13.

Bill Sienkiewicz attributes that scariness to the mystery, atmosphere and tone of Josh Boone’s direction. Basically it sounds like Josh Boone was able to get The New Mutants to be scary and be what he wanted it to be without needing the extra tools an R rating provides. Josh Boone made The New Mutants scary at PG-13 so there was no sense in making it rated-R just for the sake of it.

And while The New Mutants seems like it will be in many ways a horror film, Bill Sienkiewicz also made a point of noting that some of that genre’s weaknesses are not present in the X-Men movie. Characters will not make stupid decisions to split up just to facilitate their own demise. The New Mutants are a team and the scares do not come at the expense of logic in the film.

By leaning away from well-worn horror tropes, Bill Sienkiewicz sees The New Mutants as a new take on a horror movie and since The New Mutants seems poised to be one of the first true superhero horror films, it will be a new take on that genre as well.

Bill Sienkiewicz is certainly right that you can make a scary PG-13 movie. A Quiet Place, The Sixth Sense, Lights Out, What Lies Beneath and The Ring were all plenty scary without an R rating. Although Josh Boone has said that The New Mutants was never going to be R-rated, it seemed like the door was open to that possibility given the film’s horror bent and the success of other R-rated Fox mutant movies like Logan and Deadpool.

A trailer is just a trailer and it’s impossible to completely ignore all the trouble and delays this film has had, but judging by the new trailer, The New Mutants doesn’t look like it’s holding anything back and looks just as scary if not more so than other recent horror films that did carry an R rating. Hopefully that and Bill Sienkiewicz’s sentiments bode well for the film itself and that the long wait for The New Mutants will have been worth it.

The New Mutants opens in theaters on April 3. Check out our 2020 Release Schedule to keep track of all the movies coming out this year.

Wait, what? The New Mutants is actually coming out? Color us shocked. The oft-delayed origin story for the X-Men spinoff seemed destined for Disney+, or to be buried on a shelf somewhere, sacrificed to the industry gods that made the Disney/Fox merger happen. But this latest trailer suggest that New Mutants lives again… and actually looks pretty damn good!

For those unaware, The New Mutants are a younger and far less experienced team of mutants who, in the comics, also train under Professor Charles Xavier. The movie, directed by Josh Boone, appears to distance itself from the traditional narrative of the comics, though it will focus on several recognizable members of what will eventually become a team.

We even get a traditional team shot in the trailer! Look at this sweetness.

OK, so, what are we looking at here? Instead of being students at a school for gifted children, the mutants appear to be in a mental-help facility, with a doctor (Alice Braga) trying to “cure:” them of the mutations that make them special. A lot of the focus lies on Danielle Moonstar (Blu Hunt), whose power actually is to make people see their worst nightmares come to life. So some of the threats that are being faced by the other characters on screen make us think that Dani’s power is out of control, and needs to be harnessed.

It’s here we get to meet the on-screen versions of some classic New Mutants characters, and even get a hint of their powers, though ever so briefly. I fear this means they won’t USE their powers all that much in the movie (for budget reasons), which sucks because they’re actually very cool. Take Rahne Sinclair, for example. Played by Game of Thrones standout Maisie Williams, she shape shifts into a wolf. That HAS to happen in this movie, but we don’t see it in the trailer.

We do, however, get blink-and-you-missed-them looks at Roberto da Costa, aka Sunspot (Henry Zaga)…

… and the beginning of the power up of my favorite New Mutants character, Cannonball (Charlie Heaton), who can propel himself like a human cannonball, and be invulnerable while doing it.

Finally, we get the fifth and most mysterious member of the team. Anya Taylor-Joy plays Magik, a character who was added to the New Mutants roster later in the game (in the comics) and who might be the most powerful. A Russian sorceress, she can transport to another realm and is the sister of proven X-Men Colossus. No clue if the shiny thug will show up in The New Mutants, but it’d be a pretty cool cameo.

The story behind The New Mutants is always going to be the delay. This movie was filmed in 2017, and then got lost in the shuffle of the calendars because of the Disney and Fox merger. Then, with Marvel Studios still trying to figure out how to process mutants in the MCU, no one knew where Josh Boone’s movie would fit in.

Well, it’s coming. And it will be in theaters on April 3, 2020. What do you think, now that you have seen the trailer?

For the latter half of 2019, there was basically no news about The New Mutants, the delayed and troubled final Fox X-Men film from director Josh Boone. Then last week we got our first positive sign that not only does this movie still exist, but a new trailer is on the way in January of 2020. We know exactly when we should expect it, because another New Mutants trailer is finally on the way and it’s coming in less than a week. Take a look:

There you have it, the second trailer for The New Mutants will arrive on January 6, over two years since the first trailer dropped all the way back on October 13 of 2017. This isn’t speculation or a report either, this news comes from director Josh Boone’s verified Instagram account, so it doesn’t get much more official than that. We are finally going to get another look at The New Mutants in a little less than a week’s time on Monday, January 6, 2020.

That puts the arrival of the second trailer about three months in advance of The New Mutants’ theatrical release date on April 3. Josh Boone affirms that release date here, indicating that yes, The New Mutants will actually be playing in movie theaters. That’s notable because one of the many stories surrounding the film during its troubled road to the big screen has been whether it may wind up on a streaming service like Hulu or Disney+ instead.

There were signs positive signs over the last year that The New Mutants would get a theatrical release, but this movie has been such a rollercoaster that it would have been foolish to assume anything for certain. But it seems that as was initially intended, The New Mutants will play in theaters, making it, not Dark Phoenix, the last of the Fox X-Men films.

Josh Boone also made sure to note that the creative team behind The New Mutants were involved in the creation of this second trailer, it wasn’t just the work of the studio or some trailer house. Director Josh Boone supervised the trailer, with the help of his co-writer Knate Lee and cinematographer Peter Deming. There has been a lot of talk about the creative vision that’s driving The New Mutants and it’s clear that the filmmaker stands behind this upcoming trailer.

That is also encouraging because one of the narratives around The New Mutants has been that the studio (Disney) was reportedly unimpressed with the film, and had a difference of opinion with director Josh Boone about the tone and creative direction of the movie. There were allegedly test screenings over the summer with a cut of the film that more closely adhered to Josh Boone’s vision of a horror comic book movie and they were apparently fairly well received.

So we’ll have to wait till Monday to find out what two years of delays and tinkering has done to the look and feel of The New Mutants that we saw in the first trailer. Will it be a drastic departure from the first trailer? Will it still feel like a horror movie? Will it be R-rated?

Artist Bill Sienkiewicz, who illustrated the New Mutants in Marvel comics, says that he saw the trailer and called it phenomenal and that the horror elements remain intact. At least we don’t have long to wait to see it for ourselves.

The New Mutants opens in theaters on April 3, 2020. Check out our 2020 Release Schedule to keep track of all of the new year’s biggest movies.

There are a lot of moving pieces in place as Disney prepares to acquire Fox. Yes, Marvel Studios is preparing to adopt a number of key comics characters that once belonged to Fox, proper. But there also are a few existing movies – including Dark Phoenix and The New Mutants – that are in a limbo as fans wonder where the mutant characters will fall in the MCU. Co-producer Lauren Shuler Donner was on hand at TCA, where she spoke with CinemaBlend about the status of The New Mutants, and if it actually would make it to theaters. She candidly replied:

The New Mutants has been directed by Josh Boone, but it has been in a perpetual state of limbo for some time. Its original release date was April 13, 2018. But then it got pushed back to February of this year, and finally to August. There were rumors of rewrites and reshoots, though the more that the origin-story feature film got pushed back on Fox’s release slate, the more that it meant it probably would be a victim of Fox getting acquitted by Disney, and Disney not wanting to release a version of a movie universe that they now want to start over on.

The way that Josh Boone conceived it, The New Mutants would introduce several key members of the offshoot X-Men team – including Cannonball, Magik, Sunspot, Mirage and Wolfsbane. But it would do it under the umbrella story of young mutants being held in a secret facility against their will, as they are tested and potentially led to believe that they do not have powers.

Josh Boone, in past interviews, said that The New Mutants would have the tone and vibe of a Nightmare on Elm Street sequel. And if you are going to take a hard left turn with a mutant superhero movie, that’s an interesting turn to take.

We got a trailer for The New Mutants a while back. At the time, it looked like this:

But no one knew of that version of the story was going to keep, or if the August release would be drastically different. Then, rumors swirled that New Mutants would be dumped on a streaming service – possibly Hulu – as Disney and Marvel figured out what they wanted to do with the mutant side of the Marvel equation. Lauren Shuler Donner hopes that won’t be the case, but her words suggest that she doesn’t know, for certain.

At the moment, The New Mutants has an August 2 release date, and nothing has changed. So we will see soon enough if Donner’s wishes are upheld, and Josh Boone’s movie gets a proper theatrical release. As huge fans of the team, I just want to see it. How do you feel?

This poll is no longer available.

The X-Men franchise is seriously expanding. It's true that we will no longer see any more Wolverine movies, but thanks to the success of Deadpool, 20th Century Fox has started developing big plans for the future of its flagship comic book series. A huge part of this equation is the New Mutants film that has been in development for a couple of years, and now that project is less than a year away from release. But what exactly is New Mutants? The answer to that question is what we're here to provide.

As we do with all major upcoming releases, the following What We Know So Far guide has been constructed as a means of collecting all of the information that is currently available about the New Mutants movie. When is it coming out? Who is directing it? Who are the main characters? We address all of those queries and more below, so read on... but first, give the teaser trailer a watch!

What Is The New Mutants Release Date?

While 2017 marked the first year that Marvel Studios had three comic book movies in theaters, 20th Century Fox's X-Men franchise was trying not to lag too far behind. The studio announced plans to have their own trio of blockbusters in 2018 -- with the first on the docket being New Mutants, which had a release date of April 13, 2018. Unfortunately, two big scheduling changes in early 2018 lead to New Mutants getting pushing back twice by the studio by the time early April rolled around. First, the film was pushed to February 22, 2019. Then, a couple of months later, the horror-themed superhero film was delayed again, this time until August 2019. The 1990s-set X-Men: Dark Phoenix was also moved into 2019, meaning that the only X-movie fans will see in 2018 will be David Leitch's Deadpool 2.

While an August debut might seem a bit late to capture the attention of comic book movie fans, let's remember that Guardians of the Galaxy hits screens on August 1, 2014, and matching the success of that film would certainly be considered a big win for The New Mutants.

What Is The New Mutants Rating?

Unlike the other major comic book movie franchises, the X-Men titles are the first to really experiment when it comes to exploration of different ratings. Most of these films stick to PG-13 as a way of ensuring that teenage fans can buy tickets, but both Deadpool and Logan have proven that there is a whole lot of money to be made making these titles strictly for adults. Because of these successes, it's entirely suspected that 20th Century Fox will continue making R-rated superhero flicks for many years to come... but it doesn't look like The New Mutants will be one of them.

The MPAA doesn't actually hand down a movie's rating until the nearly-completed product is getting ready to arrive in theaters, but there hasn't been any indication that The New Mutants will be aiming for a restricted label. As we will get into later in this article, the film is expected to feature a few shocks and scares, but signs have been pointing to this blockbuster getting made with audiences 13 and older in mind.

Who Is The New Mutants Director?

Looking at the past work of director Josh Boone, you might not necessarily pin him as the director of the next great superhero blockbuster. After all, he made his directorial debut in 2012 with the romantic comedy Stuck In Love, and primarily found himself garnering a lot of attention for his 2014 hit cancer drama The Fault In Our Stars. It turns out, however, that Boone is actually a big-time comic book fan, and utilized that passion to land the New Mutants directing gig.

Josh Boone first became attached to the X-Men blockbuster when it was first announced back in May of 2015, and has been working towards getting it made ever since (with only his plans to adapt Stephen King's The Stand serving as a distraction). Now, however, he has cleared his schedule, and is using 2017 as his year to bring The New Mutants to life on the big screen.

Danielle Moonstar a.k.a. Mirage

It was revealed in November 2016 that the New Mutants movie would adapt one of the comic series' most notable arcs, The Demon Bear -- and from this we can glean that Danielle Moonstar will be the central character in the upcoming film. And while we don't yet know who will be playing the mutant heroine in Josh Boone's blockbuster, we can get a solid idea of what to expect from the movie in general by exploring Moonstar's role in the story.

Danielle Moonstar is a Native American mutant with a number of impressive mental powers -- including telepathy and psionic abilities -- but they manifested in a rather horrific way when she was a young girl. Specifically, she caught a psychic glimpse of her parents being killed by a demonic bear -- and then a few weeks later both her mom and dad disappeared. She was taken in by her magically-inclined grandfather, Black Eagle, and while she continued to have nightmares about the Demon Bear, they were kept at bay thanks to Black Eagle's spells.

These horrific dreams return to Moonstar during her tenure as a member of the New Mutants team, but rather than repressing them, she prepares to take on the evil ursine. Unfortunately for her, this horrific entity proves to be far more than she can face by herself, and she turns to her teammates to assist her in her battle.

It was only just about a week before the start of production on New Mutants that the film cast its star to play Danielle Moonstar, but at least they got it done under the wire. In early July 2017, it was reported that the comic book movie blockbuster had hired newcomer Blu Hunt to take on the key role in the 2018 flick. The film will actually be her big screen debut, though she does have some notable experience in that she plays a recurring role on the CW series The Originals.

Rahne Sinclair a.k.a. Wolfsbane

Thanks to Mystique and Beast in previous X-Men movies, fans have seen plenty of mutants who have the ability to physically transform on the big screen... but Wolfsbane's particular power is a tad more traditional than what we've seen. After all, she is basically a mutant lycanthrope -- able to either turn herself into a human/wolf hybrid or go full wolf-mode.

Like most of the New Mutants team, Wolfsbane a.k.a. Rahne Sinclair was created by Chris Claremont and Bob McLeod, and her backstory involves a strictly religious upbringing in Scotland that was followed by horrific persecution. She was nearly burned at the stake, but was rescued and eventually adopted by Moira MacTaggert (who was played by Rose Byrne in X-Men: First Class and X-Men: Apocalypse). Sadly, at this stage we don't know how much of this narrative will find its way into the New Mutants movie.

What we do know, however, is the identity of the actress who will be playing the first live-action version of Wolfsbane. It was reported all the way back in April 2016 that Game of Thrones star Maisie Williams was being considered for the part, and Josh Boone basically confirmed the casting himself in February 2017 by posting concept art of a part-wolf Williams. Considering that the writer/director has been discussing the horror elements of the movie he wants to make, hopefully we can expect some very cool transformation sequences.

Illyana Rasputin a.k.a. Magik

Actress Anya Taylor-Joy caught a lot of people's attention extremely fast thanks to her fantastic performance in the 2015 indie horror movie The Witch, and her star has only been rising ever since. She played the lead role in M. Night Shyamalan's 2017 hit Split -- and now she is confirmed to be a part of her second superhero franchise. It has been confirmed that Taylor-Joy will be playing Magik a.k.a. Illyana Rasputin in Josh Boone's New Mutants.

If that last name looks familiar (beyond the notorious Russian mystic), it's because Magik is actually the younger sister of Piotr Rasputin a.k.a. the metal-covered mutant Colossus. They grew up together in Russia, though Illyana was kidnapped and brought to the United States when she was only six years old. It was after her rescue that she was first brought to the X-Mansion - though she spent most of her adolescence in the Limbo dimension being trained in the ways of magic and combat.

It was after leaving the Limbo dimension that she returned to Earth and joined the New Mutants (she was 10 years older than when she left, but no time had passed since her departure). In addition to her learned skills, her mutant power allows her to teleport -- though what sets her apart from, say, Nightcrawler, is that she can teleport through both space and time, both future and past. It's not a power that's easily controlled, and significant screw-ups have occurred -- but that should just make for great story fodder in the New Mutants movie.

Bobby da Costa a.k.a. Sunspot

Most of the characters who will make up the titular team in The New Mutants will be making their live-action debut -- but Sunspot is the exception. Director Bryan Singer enlisted actor Adan Canto to play the part in X-Men: Days of Future Past, using him as one of last surviving mutants in a future that has been destroyed by the Sentinels. Of course, the timeline shift that occurred at the end of that movie means that he's technically not part of the canon anymore, which opens up the possibility to use him in Josh Boone's New Mutants.

Hailing from Brazil, Sunspot a.k.a. Roberto "Bobby" da Costa has the mutant ability to soak in solar power and redirect it. While he ordinarily looks like a normal person, when he is in his energized state his entire body turns into a non-reflective black color, allowing him to most efficiently absorb the sun's energy. Actor Henry Zaga, who recently earned attention for his part in the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why, will be playing the part in The New Mutants, and the project will be his biggest to date. We're excited to see what he does with it.

Sam Guthrie a.k.a. Cannonball

As far as adapting mutant powers for the big screen, the introduction of Cannonball in New Mutants should be quite interesting. In the most basic terms, he has the power to fly at super speeds -- but what makes that possible is that he can release thermo-chemical energy from his skin, and basically turn the lower half of his body into a jet propulsion system. Because of this, he can fly around incredibly fast, create blast fields, and really just kick all kinds of ass.

So who will be playing the southern-fried, Kentucky-born mutant in New Mutants? For a long time it was suggested that the role could go to Nat Wolff, who previously worked with Josh Boone on The Fault in Our Stars, but that rumor hit the wastebasket in May 2017. Instead, it looks like Cannonball a.k.a. Sam Guthrie will be played by Stranger Things star Charlie Heaton. Can he pull off the accent? We'll find out soon enough!

Dr. Cecilia Reyes

Initially it was expected that Rosario Dawson would be playing the role of Dr. Cecilia Reyes in The New Mutants - the actress previously having a close relationship with comic book material through projects like the Marvel Netflix shows and the animated Wonder Woman movie. Scheduling conflicts forced her to drop out, however, leaving the production with a casting gap to fill. Fortunately, they landed on the talented Alice Braga to play the part.

As you would expect, Dr. Cecilia Reyes is a mutant herself, in addition to being a doctor, and was introduced to Marvel Comics in 1997. Her special ability is the creation of psioplasmic bio-fields... which basically means that she can generate an incredibly strong energy barrier around herself that can protect her from outside attack. It's worth noting that she doesn't really have a big connection with the New Mutants in the source material, but this would hardly be the first time details were fudged in an adaptation. Based on the trailer, it looks like she will be the primary caretaker for the titular characters as they adjust to their dangerous abilities.

Between the MCU and DCEU, there is no shortage of comic book movies. But the X-Men franchise is not one to be left out. The very first trailer for Josh Boone's The New Mutants arrived this week, and it's unlike any superhero movie we've ever seen before. A horror film revolving around a group of young mutants, the upcoming film looks like a scary and thrilling take on the X-Men mythos. But what is the time period, and could they ever crossover with Deadpool or the proper X-Men films? Director Josh Boone recently revealed the setting, and it sounds like a crossover could happen fairly easily.

Well, that's one step closer. With so many timelines happening in the X-Men franchise's long history, the wrong time period could end up stopping the films from crossing over. But a present day setting puts it in the same timeline as the Deadpool films, and just a few decades after the upcoming X-Men: Dark Phoenix film, which will be set in the 1990s.

In particular, it would be exciting to see Deadpool cross over with The New Mutants, considering they share main characters that are related. The former features the behemoth X-Man Colossus, who tries to get Wade Wilson to join the team. And The New Mutants will star Anya Taylor-Joy as Illyana Rasputin / Magik, who is actually Colossus' sister. If Magik manages to escape the secret facility she's currently being kept in, it seems plausible that she would seek out her brother while finding a safe place to lay low.

In his interview with IGN, Josh Boone the possibility of crossovers. And while he's keeping tight lipped, he certainly seems to be teasing The New Mutants' role in the future of the X-Men franchise,

While not a concrete confirmation, Josh Boone certainly seems to understand the fans' hopes for potential crossovers. Cinematic Universes are very en vogue right now, and crossovers have become commonplace-- to the joy of the rabid fandoms. And with The X-Men franchise finally expanding to films other than the main installments, there are a bevy of interesting character pairings that could arise. After all, who doesn't want to see Evan Peters' Quicksilver and Ryan Reynolds' Deadpool banter with each other? No one.

Josh Boone's The New Mutants will arrive April 13th, 2018. In the meantime, check out our 2018 release list to plan your other trips to the movies in the New Year.

The year 2018 is going to be a major one for the future of the X-Men franchise, with three different releases set to hit theaters. The most notable are David Leitch's Deadpool 2 and Simon Kinberg's X-Men: Dark Phoenix, but months before either of those will see the arrival of Josh Boone's New Mutants. And if this new trailer is anything to go by, we should be in for a real treat in the early months of next year.

It's always a nice combination when Friday the 13th lands in October -- the day of superstitious arriving during the spookiest month of the year -- and 20th Century Fox has celebrated with a nice new genre experiment within the X-Men brand. While most of the titles in the franchise are either large scale or small scale action movies, New Mutants is a straight-up horror feature, and it looks like it will be introducing a welcome new flavor to the comic book-based proceedings. The key to keeping these kinds of movies going is always going to be variety, and this film definitely looks different than any other Marvel adaptation that we've previously seen.

Based on the comic series of the same name created by Chris Claremont and Bill McLeod, and adapted by Josh Boone and Knate Gwaltney, The New Mutants is set in a hospital where young mutants who can't control their powers are taken in. The main cast of characters includes Cannonball (Charlie Heaton), a young man who can turn himself into a human rocket; Magik (Anya Taylor-Joy), who can teleport using portals; Sunspot (Henry Zaga), who has the ability to absorb and manipulate solar energy; Wolfsbane (Maisie Williams), who can turn into a wolf as well as a wolf/human hybrid; and lastly young Mirage (Blu Hunt), who can conjure images of a person's worst fears. Under the tutelage of Dr. Cecilia Reyes (Alice Braga) they each learn how to start reigning in their special abilities, but as you can see from the trailer, it involves some serious spooks.

To be perfectly frank, watching this trailer for The New Mutants is a nice reminder of how far the "comic book movie genre" has come - which is to say so far that the term "comic book movie genre" has basically become meaningless. These kinds of films used to all be cookie cutter action movies with superpowered heroes taking on superpowered villains in giant action sequences, but there is absolutely none of that present in this work. What Josh Boone has created here looks like it is straight-up horror, a fascinating interpretation of the source material, and it looks fantastic.

If this special trailer for Friday the 13th is just a taste of what we can expect to get from the finished feature, than the next six months are going to be a serious challenge. Set to come out on a Friday the 13th of its own, The New Mutants has been scheduled for release on April 13, 2018. We couldn't possibly be more excited now, so stay tuned for more updates and coverage over the next couple days, weeks, and months!

As the X-Men franchise has played around with comic lore to a certain respect, a lot of folks are wondering just how close Josh Boone's The New Mutants will hew to the source material. Well, while we don't know any official plot details just yet, if Anya Taylor-Joy's words on the matter are any indication, it looks like the spin-off is going to lock in all of the right pieces of the Marvel books. Specifically, Taylor-Joy reassured fans of the Marvel comic saying,

Anya Taylor-Joy, who is playing llyana Rasputin a.k.a. Magik in the film, recently relayed these thoughts during an interview with Hey You Guys. So while some folks might attack a film like The New Mutants with a fresh take, or one minimally linked to its source material, it sounds like this brand new branch of the X-Men universe is going to be pretty accurate when it comes to the film adaptation of the Chris Clarmont and Bob McLeod-created series.

The greatest indication that Boone's adaptation, co-written by Knate Lee, is going to live up to that promise is the fact that it's using the villainous Demon Bear as its main protagonist. With its importance to the New Mutants line being rooted in the earliest days of the comic's run, that bear's presence imparts that Josh Boone cares about how to properly tell this story in order to give it the right foundation to potentially continue through into the future.

Thankfully, we won't have to wait too long to see what it is that Josh Boone is bringing to the table with The New Mutants. While the film is still a few months away, set to drop in theaters on April 13, 2018, we are getting a special early treat late tonight/early tomorrow in the form of the first ever trailer. We will have the footage for you as soon as it goes live online, so be sure to check back here on CinemaBlend at 12:01 AM PST to ring in Friday the 13th the right way!

The Stephen King business is booming. With IT crushing for Warner Bros. and The Dark Tower... well, opening for Sony, studios are looking to get back into King adaptations, which at one point dominated multiplexes for years. In addition to Gerald's Game on Netflix and Mr. Mercedes on television, the next King property to make its way to movie theaters will be an adaptation of The Talisman.

Variety has the story, stating that Josh Boone -- of New Mutants and The Fault in Our Stars -- has been tapped by producer Frank Marshall to write the screenplay for The Talisman, with a possibility that he'll stay on to direct. I wonder if a lot of that has to do with the success of New Mutants, which Boone is busy directing at the moment for a 2018 release. If that movie were too take off, Fox might want to keep him in the fold for another chapter of that mutant saga. Then again, The Talisman could beckon.

Written by Stephen King and Peter Straub in 1984, The Talisman follows a young boy named Jack Sawyer, whose mother is dying. Jack learns that he can cure his mom is he can acquire a talisman. But in order to retrieve it, Jack has to embark on a journey that will take him between our world and a parallel world (readers of King's Dark Tower series will recognize several properties of The Territories, a land that Jack must travel through). King and Straub actually reunited years later to pen Black House, a sequel that catches up with Jack as an older man, now working as a homicide detective. So if this first movie takes off, there's a framework in place for a second film (Just like IT.)

This could be the tip of the iceberg for Stephen King news in the realm of adaptations. Back in the day, King books like Cujo, Firestarter, The Shining and Misery fueled audiences' collective nightmares. King has stayed prolific over the years, meaning that many storytellers have the ability to convert more recent works of fiction. Or, as is the case with The Talisman (or IT), they can go back to old King works, blow the dust off of them, and give them a fresh coat of imagination paint.

We'll keep you updated on the progress of The Talisman as it comes together, even though it might take time to finally reach theaters. Josh Boone, as we mentioned, is occupied with New Mutants at the moment, and if he's just starting the screenplay (with an eye to direct), it could be years before we're actually able to watch the epic story unfold. In the meantime, visit our 2018 Movie Release Schedule to see which blockbusters will be in theaters next year.

Don't look now, but FOX is trying to reinvent how it approaches the superhero genre with a few of its spinoff properties. Logan already impressed critics and audiences by allowing James Mangold to send Hugh Jackman off in a downbeat neo-Western. Deadpool poured its filthy heart into an R-rated, violent package. And we have been hearing that Josh Boone's New Mutants would be a teen-horror experiment, though now we know more about the actual plot. 20th Century Fox CEO Stacey Snider recently revealed:

We have heard the term "Stephen King meets John Hughes" when it comes to the type of movie that Josh Boone (The Fault In Our Stars) is setting out to make with New Mutants, which kicks off an exciting year for FOX in 2018. But Stacey Snider's comments to Variety pull back a little more of the curtain on this intriguing superhero property and better explain how it's going to stand apart from the ongoing X-Men saga.

The Shining? One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest? Those are completely unexpected touchstone properties to reference when making a teenage superhero movie. If anything, they put New Mutants on a line with Legion, and if you watched FX's program, you know how different its approach to the genre turned out to be.

The New Mutants, for those who might not be familiar with this team, were introduced in their own comic book back in 1982. They were a younger spinoff team to the X-Men, and constantly wrestled with an inability to control their powers, the immature counterpart to the veteran, savvy X-Men team. The roster of the team has changed numerous times over the years, but for the movie, we know that we will be getting Cannonball (Charlie Heaton), Magik (Anya Taylor-Joy), Mirage (Blu Hunt), Wolfsbane (Maisie Williams) and Sunspot (Henry Zaga).

But now, thanks to Stacey Snider's comments, we're envisioning a self-contained haunted house thriller that's set in an institute (a la One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) that still plays off of the teenage-relationship dramas that were made popular by John Hughes' classics. Will that be enough to help New Mutants stand apart from the rest of the Upcoming X-Men movies? We will find out when New Mutants finally opens in theaters on April 13, 2018.

It's starting to getting harder to get excited over a new X-Men movie, but the in-development New Mutants could be the kick in the pants the X-Men franchise needs. With an all new cast and creative team behind it, New Mutants at least has the advantage of being fresh and adding some salt to a franchise that some believe has grown stale. There have been plenty of rumors as to who this new cast of characters will include, but now we might have our first confirmation of at least one mutant member of the super team. Check out this post from director Josh Boone.

Josh Boone is working hard at developing his X-Men spin-off New Mutants, and took to Twitter to share a picture of what looks like the first member of the team: Wolfsbane, the exclusively wolf based shapeshifter. And more than that, the picture (drawn by illustrator Ashely R. Guillory) depicts Game of Thrones star Maisie Williams as the character! This isn't exactly an official confirmation that Williams is in the film, but since the director himself is the one doing the posting, then we are more than likely looking at the first cast member of New Mutants.

Wolfsbane has been a core member of the New Mutants since the team's inception in 1982. It's long been rumored that the character would be in the film and that Maisie Williams was being courted to play the part. Though no one said this was officially happening, Williams did positively express an interest in doing the movie, saying that she'd "absolutely love" to be a part of it. It looks like she's getting her wish, but until 20th Century Fox issues an official statement, we'll keep our champagne bottle corked.

For those unfamiliar, Wolfsbane is a Scottish mutant with the ability to transform into a wolf, as well as a transitional state between wolf and human (a werewolf basically). She's been a staple of the New Mutants comic books, and it doesn't come as much of a surprise that she finds herself up on the big screen.

In addition to Wolfsbane, the rest of the team is rumored to be filled out by Cannonball, Magik, Dani Moonstar, Sunspot, and Warlock. Anya Taylor-Joy (Split, The Witch) has been associated with the movie for as long as Maisie Williams, with rumors circulating that she is being pursued to play Magik. Nat Wolff (The Fault in Our Stars) is also apparently in the running to play Cannonball. There's been no official word on any of these castings just yet, but given the above tweet, we're likely in for some more news very soon.

New Mutants is written and directed by Josh Boone and currently does not have a release date.

The New Mutants are an unproven property. Though Fox has cranked out numerous X-Men movies (and Wolverine spinoffs), the young mutants from Marvel's stable of superheroes haven't had a shot at big-screen success just yet. They'll get their chance soon enough, and a source might have just revealed who the team will fight.

ComingSoon is reporting that the villain Demon Bear will be the main antagonist in Josh Boone's planned series launcher, though the movie doesn't yet have its own confirmed release date. If you didn't read the New Mutants comics, you might not know that Demon Bear made its debut in New Mutants #3 (released in May 1983), and as you might expect from the name, it's a giant bear creature who derives the bulk of its power from negative energies. In the comics, he looks like this, though you can click over to ComingSoon for an idea of what Demon Bear will look like in the New Mutants movie.

The Demon Bear has possessed various members of the New Mutants team in the comic book stories, from Moonstar to Warpath and Bishop (who appeared briefly in X-Men: Days of Future Past). This could hint at the lineup of the New Mutants movie, though we have reported on rumors of which members would make up the team in its first movie. ComingSoon is also reporting that Nat Wolff, who starred in Josh Boone's The Fault in Our Stars, could play Cannonball in the movie, which would be fine by us.

This is also interesting: ComingSoon is reporting that instead of sticking to the traditional X-Men mold, New Mutants will be a "Stephen King meets John Hughes" type horror teen movie, which has the site comparing it to Netflix's Stranger Things. If that's the case, we are SO on board.

But when might we see this movie? Fox doesn't have a traditional X-Men movie in tap at the moment, focusing instead on Logan and Deadpool 2. They just carved out two release dates for "mystery" Marvel movies. Could New Mutants be programmed in for November 2, 2018? Josh Boone has been busy working on it, sharing his progress on Instagram, so we know it's farther along than Channing Tatum's Gambit, which currently has no director. Stay tuned for more information on New Mutants as it becomes available, but for now, are you excited for Demon Bear?

The most mysterious of Fox’s X-Men related film projects is Josh Boone’s New Mutants. The film has been officially announced and Boone is signed to write and direct the project but, in an era where release dates are set half a decade in advance, we have no idea when we’ll finally see the thing, or much about what the film will actually look like when we do. Now, the director himself may be giving us a bit of an inside look. He’s posted comic images of several New Mutants online. If the collection of images will be our New Mutants team in the movie, then get ready for Wolfsbane, Mirage, Cannonball, Sunspot, Magik, and Warlock.

Starting a couple of days ago, and leading right up to a few hours ago, several New Mutants images have gone up on Josh Boone’s Instagram account. Each has gone up without any comment beyond hashtags denoting each character's name and #newmutants. The obvious implications are that these are the characters he’s using in his New Mutants script. We know Boone is well into writing the movie so if there’s only one person in the world who knows which New Mutants will be making an appearance, he’s the one.

Each character posted has been a member of the New Mutants at one point or another and four of them were original team members. The other two joined the team shortly after its creation. This would certainly make for a logical team. Each one of these characters would certainly have been considered at some point. Cannonball and Mirage were both early leaders of the team. Magik is the sister of popular X-Man, and Deadpool co-star, Colossus. We would fully expect that at least a couple of these characters would end up in the New Mutants movie, but if only a couple of them were, then we’d really wonder why the rest would have their pictures posted.

The only other thing that we know about New Mutants at this point is that it’s being written as as a Young Adult movie set within the X-Men universe. This would set the film apart from the rest of Fox’s X-Men movies, and at the opposite end of the spectrum from Deadpool, but as all the New Mutants are teenagers just learning to use their powers, it makes sense to set that sort of tone. Josh Boone helmed The Fault in our Stars previously which may be the reason he was tasked with New Mutants.

What do you think of this New Mutants team? Are they the right ones to start this new chapter in the X-Men universe? Is there anybody else that you’d like to see? It’s possible that Josh Boone isn’t done posting pictures yet. Which character do you think Maisie Williams might play?

FOX has done an impeccable job of cleaning up its Marvel mutant universe over the last few years. Following a hard reboot of the continuity with X-Men: Days of Future Past, the studio has gone on to show that niche characters can turn a huge profit with the success of Deadpool. With that in mind, the studio has set its sights to the future for something different, or more specifically, something new.

Rumors have swirled that Maisie Williams a.k.a Arya Stark of Game of Thrones may join the highly-anticipated upcoming New Mutants film, and Williams herself has voiced her own support for that to rumor to materialize. Here’s what she had to say about the matter.

Maisie Williams recently spoke out to EW and addressed the potential rumors that she would sign on for the New Mutants film. Although she would neither confirm nor deny the validity of the rumors, she remains vocal in her desire to join the "Marvel family," and become a superhero in her own right. One thing is certain: when fans and stars want something to happen, chances are it will end up happening. (Right, Ryan Reynolds and Deadpool?)

The EW report also goes on to indicate that – if cast – Maisie Williams could potentially play a character from the X-Men universe known as Wolfsbane. Fans of the X-Men mythos will recognize Wolfsbane as a character with the ability to turn into (you guessed it) a creature with wolf-esque qualities. The New Mutants film will essentially provide a continuation of what fans have come to expect from the X-Men franchise: James McAvoy’s Charles Xavier teaching his institution of gifted youngsters how to properly harness their mutations and use them for the betterment of mankind.

If Maisie Williams does indeed sign on to become part of FOX’s X-Men universe, she won’t be the first alumni from Game of Thrones to cross over into the world of misunderstood superheroes. Her onscreen sister Sophie Turner a.k.a Sansa Stark has already made the transition, and will grace the silver screen as a young Jean Grey in this summer’s X-Men: Apocalypse.

At this point it remains to be seen whether or not Maisie Williams will sign on for the New Mutants film. Considering the mutant universe’s recent return to its former glory, and the rising popularity of the X-Men mythos, it seems like a smart career move. We will keep you posted regarding any and all pertinent details related to the New Mutants movie as they become available; be sure to check out the X-Men next when X-Men: Apocalypse hits theaters on May 27.

Stephen King has more of his books turned into TV series and movies than literally anybody else. His novel 11.22.63 is currently running on Hulu, and his Dark Tower series is moving forward, though in a very confusing way. With so many projects being worked on, it’s only fair that King would have, at least, one work in another well-known part of the Hollywood process: development hell.

A feature film adaptation of Stephen King’s magnum opus The Stand has been on the drawing board for years. It’s seen multiple directors over the years and while things appeared to be moving forward with Josh Boone (The Fault In Our Stars) both writing and directing the film, or films, that’s now off the table as well... at least, at the moment. According to producer Roy Lee’s interview with Collider, Boone is looking at making a different movie that he’s written now. This has put The Stand on the back burner.

Interestingly, Josh Boone’s other film that will be keeping him busy for the next little while is also based on a Stephen King book, Revival. Samuel L. Jackson is already interested in a role in the project, so things look to be moving forward much faster here than they are for The Stand.

At this point, the production can afford to wait for Boone. Warner Brothers’ option on the movie recently expired, reverting all the rights back to CBS Films. As CBS had gone looking for a partner to help them produce the film in the first place, it’s likely they’ll want to do so again. This means the movie will be at a standstill until CBS can find a new studio to team up with.

In addition to the film being placed on hold, it appears the plans for a companion TV series have been completely jettisoned. One of the numerous plans considered for this new production of The Stand was to open it with a multiple-episode TV series and then use the feature film as a finale. That idea is now apparently off the table. It’s now being considered as either a multi-part film series, or possibly, one single film. This was originally how Josh Boone had written his script but it got Warner Brothers so excited that they began to look at ways to expand it.

Will The Stand ever make it to the screen? If it ever does, what form would you like to see it take?

Samuel L. Jackson clearly has a thing for Stephen King adaptations. That’s because The Hateful Eight star has lined up his third cinematic role sourced from one of the author’s works. He appeared in 1408 in 2007, based on King's short story of the same name, and Cell, adapted from the author's 2006 novel, is set to premiere in the coming months. Jackson has been linked with a leading role in Revival, which was previously released by King back in 2014.

Samuel L. Jackson is reportedly interested in the role of Charles Jacobs, a preacher who starts to experiment in the supernatural using electricity. The catalyst for these experiments is the death of his wife and children in an accident. Because it’s Stephen King, things only get more peculiar and morbid from there. 

While Charles Jacobs is not the lead character of Revival (that honor belongs to Jamie Morton, who is yet to be cast), he's one of the most intriguing personalities in Stephen King’s hugely celebrated oeuvre. According to Entertainment Weekly, Samuel L. Jackson has been holding discussions with writer and director Josh Boone and producer Michael de Luca (Moneyball, Captain Phillips, The Social Network) about joining in the fun on the latest adaptation of one of King’s novels.

Josh Boone, who found huge success as a director on 2014’s The Fault In Our Stars, which was the follow-up to his debut film, Stuck In Love, was previously attached to oversee Stephen King’s The Stand. However, that adaptation is now firmly in limbo, which has provoked Boone to jump into work on Revival.

Currently, Revival isn’t attached to any studio. However, since The Fault In Our Stars grossed $307.2 million, and Boone is already attached to direct the X-Men spinoff The New Mutants, we can expect it to find a home rather soon. Especially as the always desirable Samuel L Jackson is now attached to lead the way.

Samuel L Jackson’s first Stephen King film was 1408. Released in 2007, and adapted from King’s 1999 short story of the same name, 1408 was met with impressive enough reviews and a box office haul of $132 million. Both of which should help Revival’s chance of making it to the big screen.

Cell, which once again teams Samuel L. Jackson up with his 1408 co-star John Cusack, revolves around a group of survivors who have to find and stop "the pulse" after a mysterious signal broadcast turns most of the population into mindless vicious animals. It will premiere at Glasgow Film Festival’s FrightFest at the end of the month. Fingers crossed that Cusack joins him in Revival too, because the world needs more films with John Cusack. 

As big as the Marvel Cinematic Universe is becoming, Fox has a playground just as big when it comes to the X-Men and all of their associated characters. The franchise has been going strong ever since the first film in 2000 and while it’s had the occasional misstep (we’re looking at you The Last Stand), today it looks like it’s stronger than ever. With so many different films in development, it’s possible the movies might start to get in each other’s way. It looks like Fox has some ideas on how to prevent this from happening. They'll market different films to different audiences.

While the standard X-Men films have been focused on the traditional action movie crowd, and Deadpool will be there for those who want to get a little edgy comedy in their action, the plan for the upcoming New Mutants movie is to focus on a different crowd. According to producer Simon Kinberg, speaking with Empire Magazine (via ComicBook), the film may be a better fit for fans of Katniss Everdeen than fans of Wolverine.

While the Young Adult label may set many comic fans on edge, it’s far from surprising that Fox is going this route. First off, if they were going to turn any X-Men related title into a young adult film, the New Mutants are by far the ones to go with. The New Mutants are all teenagers, and even in the comics they’ve been filling a similar role. Also, for anybody who didn’t understand when Fox hired Josh Boone, the director of The Fault in Our Stars, to helm the New Mutants, now it makes perfect sense.

It makes good business sense too. The Young Adult movies based on novels have done mostly very well at the box office. From The Hunger Games to Divergent, these movies have been huge hits. If Fox can bring more of that audience into the theater for a New Mutants movie, and then get them to come back for the next X-Men feature, they can increase the size of the built-in audience even more.

Of course, if you’re not a fan of those sorts of movies, then it may have the opposite effect. It’s a gamble to be sure. The MCU has made a couple of features which had strong comedic aspects, but otherwise, the tone and structure of each film in the series has been very similar. Between X-Men, Deadpool, and New Mutants, Fox is looking to make significantly different films within its mutant universe. While it might bring more fans in, it might also turn off fans who aren’t into one or more of the genres.

What do you think of a Young Adult mutant movie? Is branching out into new arenas the right move, or a recipe for disaster?

X-Men: Apocalypse may be the last proper X-Men film for a while, but Fox’s cinematic universe of mutants is by no means ending. Spinoffs like Deadpool and Gambit already have confirmed release dates, and there are others in development, including New Mutants, which was announced back in May. News on that project’s progress has been light in recent months, but the project is moving closer to becoming reality.

Director Josh Boone posted this picture on Instagram of the New Mutants script. Although it isn’t finished, he notes that a lot of it has been completed. Boone, who helmed last year’s The Fault in Our Stars, is co-writing the film with Jackass contributor Knate Gwaltney, while Simon Kinberg and Lauren Shuler Donner will be continue their roles in the X-Men universe as producers. Good luck trying to make out any of the words on the top page, but it’s safe to say that New Mutants is being taken seriously as a future installment for the franchise.

Although no plot details have been disclosed, the film will presumably revolve around the team of young mutant superheroes created by writer Chris Claremont and artist Bob McLeod in 1982. Like the original team, these teenagers were students at Professor Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, where they learned how to be superheroes. The original members included Cannonball (who can generate a thermo-chemical energy that propels him forward at fast speeds), Karma (who can psychically possess other people’s bodies), Mirage (who can generate illusions), Sunspot (who can channel and absorb solar energy), and Wolfsbane (who can transform into a werewolf). 

Of these five mutants, only Sunspot has already appeared in the film series as one of the surviving mutant fighters in X-Men: Days of Future Past’s apocalyptic future, although his allies Blink and Warpath were members of later iterations of the team in the comics. It’s worth noting that New Mutants may not sport the same lineup as its earlier years, much like how X-Men: First Class only featured one of the original X-Men (Beast). Still, with the X-Men timeline having been reset, New Mutants could be the best way to start telling team adventures in the present day without having to bring back most of the cast from the original movies, although we wouldn’t mind a few of those people playing supporting roles or cameoing.

No release date has been announced yet for New Mutants, but we’ll keep you apprised on any developments regarding its progress. 

While we’re still making paper boats out of book pages in sadness over Stephen King’s IT losing its director, it looks like one of the horror icon’s other magnum opuses is moving forward in a brand new way. In addition to the big screen version of The Stand that’s currently in development, director Josh Boone is apparently going to first bring part of The Stand’s epic apocalypse to TV with a miniseries that’s already got a cable network home in its sights.

Warner Bros. and CBS Films are currently in talks with Showtime to initially bring The Stand to audiences through an eight-part miniseries, according to TheWrap. Boone, who is already writing and directing the presumably hours-long feature film (or films, depending on how it goes), will also handle the scripting and helming duties for the small screen take on the massive novel. And rather than head up one before the other, Boone is putting both projects together in the same production schedule. Color me extremely interested but not jealous of the monumental task.

At this point, a lot of the details are still up in the air. It’s not clear exactly what part of the story the miniseries will be tackling, although one can assume it will focus on the first chunk of the novel, called “Captain Trips,” in which the weaponized pandemic first starts to take over the population. It could easily lay the groundwork for the Good vs. Evil showdown that the film will want to pack in as much as possible. The potential of having the legendary villain Randall Flagg on both TV and a movie is almost too much to consider, especially if they end up roping Matthew McConaughey in for the role.

Speaking of the cast – which will presumably be gigantic, given the amount of characters the book puts together – it sounds like elite Hollywood agencies are on the hunt for top-tier actors to fill this project, as Boone reportedly wants some major stars heading it. Limited TV series have been giving us better-than-normal actors who don’t always want to devote huge chunks of time to multi-season shows, and the prospect of having a movie also attached to the series should make it sound even better to prospective cast members. Let’s just pencil in Cate Blanchett for Mother Abagail, shall we?

Fans of The Stand will probably remember the previous miniseries version that ABC put together in 1994, with Gary Sinese and Rob Lowe (among dozens of others). It was a pretty good version of the material, though it never quite stood up to expectations. Here’s hoping this new miniseries will top it in every way, and if it happens to get Hollywood interested in going the same TV-and-movie collaboration that was originally conceived for The Dark Tower series, we’re all in on that, too.

Showtime is really reaching out to horror and thriller fans, with Penny Dreadful currently wowing audiences and a new season of Twin Peaks coming next year. As well, Stephen King adaptations are as popular as ever, with Mr. Mercedes and 11/22/63 coming to the small screen in the future. We can’t wait to see how The Stand stacks up.

Following in the footsteps of Bryan Singer, Brett Ratner, Gavin Hood, Matthew Vaughn and James Mangold, director Josh Boone became the latest filmmaker to join the X-Men franchise this week when it was announced that he would be helming a new title called The New Mutants. Given that Boone's last two films were the romantic dramadies Stuck in Love and The Fault In Our Stars, many have wondered what his comic book credentials are - but now he has impressively put them on display.

Clearly excited about the fact that he will soon be directing an X-Men movie, Josh Boone has been using his personal Twitter account these past few days to show off his deep, long love for not only the X-Men characters, but comics in general. In the image above, the filmmaker shows off his rather huge collection of Marvel omnibi, oversized-hardcovers and trade paperbacks, all of which chronicle many, many years of X-Men and X-Men-related comics (like X-Force). The collection features some of the best Marvel Comics events and arcs, and - provided that he's read all the books - shows that Boone has some extreme depth in this area of knowledge. But that's just one of his Tweets:

Here we see not only a young Josh Boone hanging out and reading comics as a kid, but also his New Mutants co-writer Knate Gwaltney - who he evidently grew up with. Like Boone, Gwaltney doesn't have a ton of comic book credentials on his resume, with most projects actually being related to the Jackass franchise - but it seems that his appreciation for the medium goes way back as well.

Josh Boone's most recent Tweet, though, is a caption-less image of the filmmaker as a kid holding up a notable event in the history of Spider-Man comics, "The Day Gwen Stacy Died." The issue is a "Marvel Tales" reprint of the famed book that was published in 1986 - as the original comic was released six years before Boone was born - but apparently the young Boone was so excited to have it that he wanted to take a picture to mark the occasion.

It's clear that Josh Boone is a big comic book fan, but exactly when he will get the chance to make The New Mutants is a big question mark right now. He is attached to make the Anne Rice adaptation The Vampire Chronicles as his next film, and it's expected that he will follow that with his big screen version of Stephen King's epic The Stand. So while he may be excited to make the movie, it's going to be a while before he actually gets to.

The X-Men franchise is set to have a gigantic year in 2016, with Deadpool, X-Men: Apocalypse, and Gambit all scheduled to arrive in theaters, and in 2017 we will get to see the end of Hugh Jackman's run as Wolverine. But what's the plan beyond that? Most of it is a mystery, but now new reports are saying that 20th Century Fox is now developing a new spin-off title, The New Mutants.

Deadline got the scoop on this story, and adds the bonus information that a director is already attached to helm. Josh Boone, who earned 20th Century Fox a nice chunk of cash last year thanks to his adaptation of The Fault In Our Stars, has signed on to direct The New Mutants, and he will also be co-writing the script alongside Knate Gwaltney, an up-and-coming writer who was a notable contributor to the Jackass franchise as an associate producer, camera operator, unit manager and cinematographer. X-Men franchise producers Simon Kinberg and Lauren Shuler Donner are attached to shepherd the film through development.

Unfortunately, the report doesn't actually have any other details about the project - outside of saying that the film will explore a new part of the X-Men universe - but it's probably not too much of a leap to assume that the movie will be in some way related to the New Mutants comics, which followed a group of mutant superheroes in training to become superheroes. The original group, formed by writer Chris Claremont and artist Bob McLeod, included characters like Cannonball (who could rocket himself through the air), Karma (who could mentally possess other bodies), Mirage (who could generate illusions), Sunspot (who was seen in X-Men:Days of Future Past and can absorb solar energy), and Wolfsbane (who is basically a werewolf) - but you shouldn't necessarily bank on those being the central After all, X-Men: First Class also took its name from a pre-existing series, but replaced the entire central lineup with the exception of Professor X and Beast.

This development definitely sounds exciting, but there is a catch: it seems that it is still a few years away from actually happening. Deadline says that Josh Boone is currently committed to making the Anne Rice adaptation The Vampire Chronicles as his next film, and he will be following that up with what's said to be a rather epic adaptation of Stephen King's The Stand. That being said, apparently New Mutants has lured the filmmaker away from Marvel Studios, which reportedly has been interested in him as a potential candidate to direct the new Spider-Man movie coming in 2017.

Do you like the idea of a New Mutants movie being made, and do you think Josh Boone is the right choice to helm it? Hit the comments with your thoughts.