The latest The New Mutants delay means that the X-Men movie franchise hits a very significant milestone. New Mutants has endured one of the rockiest developments in recent cinematic memory. Initially billed as another offshoot of Fox's X-Men movie series, Josh Boone took a young cast featuring Game of Thrones' Maisie Williams and Stranger Things' Charlie Heaton and sought to lean into the more horror-orientated side of Marvel comic mythology. After initial filming had wrapped in 2017 (seriously), New Mutants was subject to a number of delays, with Fox delaying the film by a year in order to get Dark Phoenix out first.
New Mutants then fell afoul of Disney's acquisition of Fox, throwing the status of the film right up in the air. Despite speculation that New Mutants might land on Disney+ or even be scrapped entirely, a theatrical release was announced and set for April 2020. Fans, cast and Boone all celebrated that light had finally emerged at the end of the mutant tunnel. Then coronavirus came along. With the worldwide pandemic worsening, a number of sporting events, concerts and other gatherings have been axed, and the movie industry is following suit. No Time To Die, F9 and A Quiet Place 2 have all been temporarily taken off the slate or moved back considerably, and New Mutants is another casualty, with no firm release date currently in place.
Obviously, this is a massive setback for a film already beset by misfortune. After years in limbo, New Mutants was less than a month from finally seeing the light of day but now has an aura of uncertainty around it once again, for entirely understandable reasons. However, the latest New Mutants delay does mean that Fox's X-Men franchise will pass a very commendable milestone. The first X-Men movie was released in July 2000 and spawned sequels, spinoffs and a semi-reboot series with a fresh cast, although all films do connect to each other in some way. New Mutants is highly unlikely to be released before July 2020, with other delayed movies being shoved to the end of the year or even 2021.
This means the X-Men franchise will almost certainly hit the 20-year mark - a milestone it would've fallen just shy of had the April release date remained in place. Classing New Mutants as a fully-fledged part of Fox's X-Men franchise is, thanks to the movie's tumultuous birth, somewhat of a contentious point. On one hand, the project very much began under that banner and was almost entirely produced while Fox was still operating. Since Disney took over the studio's assets, however, the film's connections to the Fox universe have reportedly been toned down in response to Dark Phoenix's failure, leaving New Mutants as either a standalone effort or a loose part of the MCU, if rumors are to be believed.
The 20th birthday of Charles Xavier's original big screen mutant vigilante high school ensures Fox's X-Men is the longest-running single superhero movie franchise, with everything else rebooted before reaching that mark. This will be scant consolation to Josh Boone, who is no doubt now convinced the world is conspiring against him, but such longevity is hugely impressive in today's reboot culture, even if lengthy delays might've helped to add a few years onto Fox's record.
New Mutants is currently expected to be rescheduled for 2020. More news as it arrives.