New concept art for The New Mutants reveals what the character Warlock would've looked like in the movie if he wasn't cut. When New Mutants was originally announced, the movie was supposed to be the latest effort by 20th Century Fox to move the X-Men franchise in a new direction with specific genre fare. Director Josh Boone's pitch for the film was the first horror X-Men movie and the first trailer released in 2017 generated plenty of excitement for such a vision. However, New Mutants was then delayed multiple times to do reshoots and after the Disney/Fox acquisition.
Reshoots never happened on New Mutants, but Boone was able to eventually finish his vision for the film. Disney finally released the film in theaters in August and it didn't take long for those who did go to see it in the middle of a pandemic to realize why it had been delayed so much. New Mutants received overwhelmingly negative reviews and hasn't made much money at the box office given the current state of the theatrical business. While Boone did complete the film, there were ideas and characters that New Mutants still lacks from his initial pitch.
One character who was going to appear in New Mutants at one point as the villain was Warlock. The Technarch alien isn't anywhere to be found in the movie, but now we have an idea of what he could've looked like. Artist Deryl Braun revealed pieces of concept art of Warlock he was hired to make for New Mutants on his Instagram, providing the first look at what almost was.
The possibility of Warlock appearing in New Mutants is something fans speculated about pretty early on due to calls for a motion-capture character in the film. Boone has since confirmed that the original scripts for New Mutants included Warlock, but he had to be removed because of how expensive it would be to put him in the film. Warlock's planned role in the movie isn't clear, although it appeared he almost got another chance to be included. There were reports that the reshoots that never happened were going to re-add Warlock into the film. Boone even potentially had the voice of the eventual New Mutants team member lined up, as he wanted Sacha Baron Cohen to play Warlock.
Even though Warlock was left out of New Mutants, this concept art is still an intriguing glimpse at how his live-action debut could've looked. Overall, the design is semi-comic accurate and really captures the techno-organic design of the character. It's too bad that he was ultimately not included in New Mutants, as it is now unclear when Warlock could appear on the big screen. Boone wanted Warlock to be among the new characters introduced in New Mutants 2, but it is difficult to imagine Disney greenlighting a sequel at this point. So, if Warlock is going to be in a movie, it could come in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Source: Deryl Braun