Image: 20th Century Fox

It’s not uncommon for creators to plan out entire story arcs and sequels in advance, so it’s not ever a surprise to hear that a director has an idea for a sequel to their film. But Josh Boone’s conception of his New Mutants film is intriguing.


Talking to IGN in conjunction with the release of the film’s first trailer, director Josh Boone discussed the gestation of the film, saying, “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.”

It’s an idea that goes beyond one film, too, into an entire trilogy of films jumping across the horror genre. “These are all going to be horror movies, and they’re all going to be their own distinct kind of horror movies,” Boone said. “This is certainly the ‘rubber-reality’ supernatural horror movie. The next one will be a completely different kind of horror movie.”


He continued:

﻿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.



That’s a really interesting idea, frankly. Superhero films have rarely jumped into horror in the first place, and using a single storyline (or sets of storylines) to do some genre hopping is a smart idea. One of the risks of superhero films, as they currently exist, dominated by the Marvel-Disney industrial complex, is genre stagnation—an embrace of formula at the expense of originality, verve, and joy.

I’m not sure how many more huge trilogies of superhero films we really need, but if they keep happening, I’m rooting for Boone’s New Mutants horrorshow. The New Mutants will be in theaters April 13, 2018.


[IGN, via Comic Book Resources]