The first trailer for The New Mutants launched today and, well, it looks like they’ve made a full-on horror movie in the X-Men movie universe. If you haven’t seen it already, definitely rectify that now...

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The New Mutants Trailer: Theories and Details You May Have Missed 17 IMAGES

If you're interested in understanding all of the references tucked away in that first trailer, watch our analysis of it in the video at the top of this article or by sliding through this gallery:

What follows is a more in-depth discussion with the movie’s director Josh Boone all about his inspirations, from Bill Sienkiewicz’s run to Wes Craven, his plans for future movies (which include the characters of Karma and Warlock), and how The New Mutants ties into to the existing X-Men films.

IGN: We’ve seen Fox recently take some risks with the X-Men licence, but how have they let you make a horror movie?

Josh Boone: Well, I really think it's because of what you said. I mean... FOX made Deadpool and Logan and they were sort of so tonally different they felt embolden to let us go make it different, and make have its own distinct tone and identity. I think of the mainline X-Men movies more as grand operative science-fiction films. This is much more of a performance-driven horror film.

So what are the main influences on The New Mutants from the comics but also horror in general?

Our whole pitch for this series was based on Bill Sienkiewicz run with Chris Claremont [The New Mutants vol. 1 #18–31, 35–38], so it's very much when New Mutants became dark and surreal and more horror driven.

We were incredibly inspired by the Demon Bear story which is probably the best, well-known New Mutants story. We also drew on movies like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Stephen King stuff, and even Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors.

The New Mutants, Vol. 1 #18

Darabont wrote that back in the day and that was very inspiring to us. If we'd had just done New Mutants the comic, it would've been very much set-up like an X-Men movie in the mansion with Professor X and all that. So we really wanted to do something different. So kind of what we brought to Sienkiewicz and Claremont's take on New Mutants was this idea they're all in a psych-hole for mutants.

The shot with figures stretching through the walls instantly reminded me of Freddy…

Yes, that’s my homage to Mr Craven, and we did it practically. They did that stupid remake of Nightmare and they did it with CGI, and I was like how did they do it in the original. They got rubber walls.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) The New Mutants (2018) Director Josh Boone Pays Homage to Wes Craven

90% of this movie was shot on real locations. We did as many of the effects practically as we could. It has some big visual effect stuff as well, but we really tried to do everything we could possibly do real so it would feel a little bit more like those movies we liked and were inspired by. 10% of the movie was green screen and nothing else really. We shot on in a 150 year-old mental hospital that'd been closed for 50 years.

Literally every single person on my crew – all my grips – all those people had weird things happen to them while they were there. I even told the behind-the-scenes crew to go interview everyone who had weird stuff happen to them for an extra on the Blu-ray.

Did anything spooky happen to you?

I went and even sat in the places where some people felt something, and was like, come on. Prove to me there's something after death. It didn't happen. I'm like Fox Mulder – I want to believe – but I don't.

Why out of all the X-Men characters did you want to adapt The New Mutants?

Simply, I really liked them when I was a kid.

My best friend, who I wrote this with, we've been friends literally since we were little infant babies. Our moms are best friends. We had a comic book company when we were kids and drew our own series, and would make photocopies at his grandma's house and sell them to our family.

We were hugely Marvel obsessed in the '80s, long before there was a Sam Raimi Spider-Man movie. That was like our world. New Mutants was one we really liked back then. I really remember loving the Demon Bear story, and being really into how strange and metaphysical it was and how it operated on different levels of reality. I just felt that'd be cool and interesting stuff to do in a comic book movie, and make a new way to tell a story like that.

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So is Demon Bear the film’s primary antagonist?

Nah, I wouldn't even go so far to say that. I'd just say it's very much inspired by that run on the comics.

I wouldn't want to give away too much. Although I will say there's stuff you'll never see in the trailers that are big parts of the movie.

Okay, I want to ask you a couple of more specifics. Does the entire movie take place within the asylum?

I don't ... It's hard for me to say. I’ll say it's a 'rubber reality' horror movie. So the place they're in becomes more spacious when it needs to...

What time period are we looking at?

It takes place present day.

So will we see other well-known X-Men characters we’ve met in the other movies?

I can't... there's some things I can't talk about. I can just say it is connected to and a part of the X-Men universe, and will continue to be a part of the X-Men universe and will be a part of that as it opens up in the next movies and all that.

Every video complains online about characters that aren't in it right now. I will say we're going to introduce new characters in the next movie as well. Characters like Karma and Warlock, and all that will be in future movies.

Warlock (left) and Karma (right).

Because these recent X-Men movies have very discrete and distinctive tones, do you think it’ll be a problem when it comes time for these characters to meet and crossover?

I do think about these things because... ours is very different tonally from an X-Men movie and from Deadpool and all that. I find it interesting to imagine it... It’s not necessarily problematic, but more it'll be interesting to see how they do actually do all that, if they make them be in the same film at the same time; it'll be an interesting tonal palette.

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You’ve alluded to two movies, a sort of trilogy. What’s the plan?

We brought it to FOX as a trilogy of films, really all based on that long run by Sienkiewicz, and kind of incorporates some stuff from later issues in the '80s.

These are all going to be horror movies, and they're all be their own distinct kind of horror movies. This is certainly the ‘rubber-reality’ supernatural horror movie. The next one will be a completely different kind of horror movie.

Our take was just go examine the horror genre through comic book movies and make each one its own distinct sort of horror film. Drawing from the big events that we love in the comics.

What do you want to achieve specifically in your corner of the X-Men movie-verse?

The main thing [we’re trying to achieve is] we're trying to do a couple of things. The main thing was to have a more performance driven, grounded X-Men horror movie. When I say grounded, it's still a comic book movie. So it has giant, crazy stuff that happens in it. But I think I really mean is attention to detail of the performances.

Something where they feel a little more real and a little less glib. We just tried to bring the same level of acting I did in my last movies to this genre is what I would hope for.

Daniel is IGN's UK Managing Editor. You can be part of the world's most embarrassing cult by following him on IGN and Twitter