Contrary to popular rumors, Disney won’t send its problem-plagued X-Men spinoff movie The New Mutants to streaming services Disney+ or Hulu, opting to (theoretically) send it to theaters this summer.
According to Deadline, Disney will send The New Mutants to theaters August 28, following a long string of premiere delays and production problems dating back nearly three years.
Directed and co-written by Josh Boone, who penned the screenplay with Knate Lee, The New Mutants is the final film in the long-running X-Men franchise produced by the former 20th Century Fox film studio, which was absorbed by Disney in 2019 and rebranded 20th Century Studios. The film follows a group of powerful young mutants who must team up to escape the sinister facility that they initially believed was a hospital, but is actually something far more sinister.
Although the film has been plagued with problems, its impressive cast isn’t one of the issues.
In the film, Game of Thrones actress Maisie Williams plays Rahne Sinclair, a Scottish mutant who can transform into a wolf-like creature, while The Witch actress Anya Taylor-Joy plays Illyana Rasputin, a Russian mutant with teleportation powers and other mysterious abilities. They’re joined by Stranger Things actor Charlie Heaton as Sam Guthrie, a powerful American mutant with explosive abilities; Blu Hunt as Danielle Moonstar, a Native American mutant with the power to manifest people’s greatest fears; and Henry Zaga as Roberto da Costa, a Brazilian mutant with the ability to manipulate solar energy.
The New Mutants was initially scheduled to premiere in April 2018, with the first trailer premiering in 2017. Script problems and various other delays prompted the studio to pull it from the release calendar, and the studio’s acquisition by Disney then made its theatrical release even more uncertain.
In March, a new trailer for the film was released, and it received a new release date: April 3. However, the spread of the coronavirus pandemic once again pulled the film from theaters, and many industry pundits speculated that the film would end up going to one of Disney’s streaming services — either Disney+ or Hulu — in lieu of a traditional theatrical release.
