By Travis Johnson
While the main series of X-Men films is on shaky ground, the fun folks at Fox continue to do interesting things with the various mutant offshoots that have sprung from it. Deadpool was better than we had any right to expect, Logan offered up the franchise’s best and most mature film to date, and now The Fault in Our Stars director Josh Boone has quietly pulled the trigger on The New Mutants, an adaptation of the well regarded ’80s comic that sees a class of young mutants at the Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters (or whatever the hell they’re calling it now) contend with both powers and puberty. Boone took to Instagram to demonstrate that he Gets It:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BWWI_RDj9Ct/?taken-by=joshboonemovies
Boone has assembled a pretty strong young cast, including Anya Taylor-Joy (The Witch) as Magik, Maisie Williams (Game of Thrones) as Wolfsbane, Charlie Heaton (Stranger Things) as Cannonball, with newcomer Blu Hunt (The Originals) as Dani Moonstar, and Henry Zaga (13 Reasons Why) as Sunspot. Alice Braga is on hand as de rigeur authority figure Dr. Cecilia Reyes, while fan fave character Warlock, a kind of shapeshifting biomechanical alien, will a a CGI critter, naturally.
The most interesting wrinkle here is that the film is being billed as a straight-up horror flick (albeit a PG-13 one), with Boone himself saying it’s “…a full-fledged horror movie set within the X-Men universe.” The received wisdom is that the film will adapt “The Demon Bear Saga” from The New Mutants #18 – #20, in which case we’re in for a good time.
