Director Josh Boone has revealed the post-credits scene he planned for The New Mutants, but cut following the Disney-Fox deal. Boone's adaptation of the New Mutants comic books (a spinoff of the X-Men franchise) has infamously spent the last couple years in a holding pattern after being delayed from its original April 2018 release date. Initially, Fox pushed The New Mutants back in order to allow for reshoots that would've reportedly made the film scarier and closer to Boone's initial pitch of a superhero horror movie. However, that was before Disney announced it was buying Fox's movie and TV assets in December 2017, along with the rights to its Marvel IPs like X-Men and Fantastic Four.
As a result of the deal, The New Mutants' reshoots kept being postponed until they were cancelled altogether and the movie landed on an April 2020 release date, instead. In the lead-up to the film's arrival next month, Boone has revealed The New Mutants was left 75% done for about a year while he and his creative team (including his co-writer Knate Lee) waited to learn what would ultimately become of the X-Men project under Disney's jurisdiction. Because of the uncertainty, Boone intentionally held off on shooting a post-credits scene he had planned as far back as 2018.
Speaking to EW, Boone revealed The New Mutants' original post-credits scene would've introduced Antonio Banderas as Emmanuel da Costa, father of New Mutants member Roberto aka. Sunspot (who's played by Henry Zaga in the movie). As he explained to the outlet, "It was intentional that we didn’t shoot it... because Marvel owns X-Men now and is going to do their own thing, there was no reason to go shoot it."
Those who've followed The New Mutants' progress over the years may recall this (reportedly) wasn't the very first post-credits scene planned. Back when the film was being positioned to launch a trilogy and have a massive impact on Fox's X-Men universe, The New Mutants was apparently going to introduce Jon Hamm as Mr. Sinister. The comic book villain had already been teased by X-Men: Apocalypse's own credits stinger in May 2016, but the idea was later abandoned and meant to be replaced by the after-credits scene with Banderas as Sunspot's dad. Of course, none of this ended up happening and it currently sounds like The New Mutants will release without a post-credits scene at all. At the same time, Boone isn't giving up on his dream of The New Mutants 2 just yet, telling EW "In our heart of hearts, we hope [The New Mutants] makes a bunch of money so that we can go make the second one."
For now, it's anyone's guess what will happen if The New Mutants proves to be a box office success. It was previously rumored Boone had cut all references to Fox's X-Men universe from the movie, allowing it to officially become part of the MCU in the event that it is, in fact, a hit. This is somewhat supported by the film's marketing; The New Mutants trailer released earlier this year suggests the main characters have no idea what mutants are and, in turn, have never heard of the X-Men before. It's even possible The New Mutants could continue as a franchise loosely connected to the MCU, in the same way Sony's Spider-Man villain universe appears to be. Still, considering how much of this is out of his control, it was probably a smart move on Boone's part to drop The New Mutants' credits scene and just wait to see how the film goes over first.
Source: EW
