The Fox movie has been casting up in recent weeks with the roll call including The Witch and Split star Anya Taylor-Joy, Game of Thrones' Maisie Williams and Stranger Things star Charlie Heaton. Rosario Dawson is also in talks, while 13 Reasons Why actor Henry Zaga is a recent addition as well.

The studio is looking to redefine the superhero genre as it did with Deadpool and Logan, and is focusing on giving the spinoff a horror-thriller bent. It will tell of five diverse teens learning to cope with their superpowers who must escape a secret facility where they are being held against their will.

Taylor-Joy will play Illyana Rasputin, code-named Magik, a girl who has learned sorcery and uses teleportation discs to travel. Williams will portray Rahne Sinclair, aka Wolfsbane, a Scottish girl struggling to reconcile her religious beliefs with her power to turn into a wolf. Heaton will play a Kentuckian code-named Cannonball, who can propel himself into the air and is invulnerable while doing so. Zaga will portray Sunspot, a self-styled ladies man who hails from Brazil.

The last role to be filled was Moonstar, a character who is Native American and has the power to create illusions drawn from the fears and desires of a person's mind. The character is not only perhaps the most important in the script — according to sources, the movie’s plot leans heavily on the classic "Demon Bear" storyline that ran in the pages of the Marvel Comics title in the 1980s and in which Moonstar plays a central role — but also the one whose casting proved to be the most challenging, as the studio and producers made ethnic authenticity a priority.

Searches were conducted in the U.S. as well as Canada and the U.K., among other countries, before the studio circled around Hunt, who is part Native American. CAA signed the actress hot off the search.

Hunt is quite new to the acting scene; she has appeared on a trickle of TV episodes, three being on the CW series The Originals. But with the actress being a key player in an X-Men franchise, expect the IMDb credits to begin racking up.

New Mutants is scheduled to go before cameras in July in Boston.

Hunt is additionally repped by Brett Cates at Rothman/Andres Entertainment.