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Trivia / The New Mutants

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  • Approval of God: Bill Sienkiewicz, who was the artist for the "Demon Bear Saga" story that is the primary inspiration for this movie, has repeatedly expressed support for the film.
  • Billing Displacement:
    • Dani Moonstar is the central focus of the film, but Blu Hunt is billed fifth in the role, likely due to her being lesser-known. Unsurprisingly, the top-billed heroes are Maisie Williams, Anya Taylor-Joy, and Charlie Heaton, the biggest names in the cast.
    • The film also bills Hunt and Henry Zaga below the better-known Alice Braga, despite Hunt and Zaga being actual members of the eponymous New Mutants, while Braga is not one of the central protagonists and instead, one of the antagonists.
  • Box Office Bomb: Budget: $67–80 million. Box office: $49.2 million. These returns made the film the fourth-lowest grossing of all Marvel films, only grossing higher than Man-Thing (which wasn't released theatrically in the United States), Punisher: War Zone and Howard the Duck. The COVID-19 Pandemic, various delays and The Firefly Effect lowered audiences interests, making this film the lowest-grossing X-Men film, even worse than Dark Phoenix.
  • Content Leak: Cinefex Issue #170, which was written and prepared before theaters shut down globally and The New Mutants was delayed for the fourth time, featured high-quality scans of certain scenes from the movie, such as a shot from Magik's confrontation with the Demon Bear, and multiple plot spoilers. The issue was originally planned to release after the movie did, but due to the magazine's publication schedule, it came out on the date it was already scheduled for with no adjustments to the content that was included.
  • Contractual Obligation Project: Like Dark Phoenix, since the movie was already filmed when Disney acquired 20th Century Fox, the larger company had to honor their new subsidiary's theatrical release schedule, even with Marvel Studios beginning to internally discuss plans to reboot the X-Men franchise and its spin-offs into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It will make its cable/streaming premiere on HBO (and HBO Max) later down the line for this reason, instead of Disney+.
  • Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: On the Mostly Nitpicking podcast episode on the film, both the comic and film versions of Scottish Presbyterian mutant Rahne Sinclair are referred to by the hosts as an Irish Catholic (granted the film does appear to have changed Rahne to a Catholic).
  • Creator Backlash: Maisie Williams doesn't seem to think much of this film if this clearly sarcastic tweet is any indication.
  • Disowned Adaptation: The comic's co-creator Bob McLeod gave the movie a savage review, coming down especially hard on Roberto being played by a white Brazilian actor instead of a black Brazilian one, not thinking much better of how the rest of his characters were adapted (despite liking the actors cast in those parts), and the fact that they couldn't even spell his name right in the credits (as Bob "Macleod") despite having three years to catch the mistake.
  • Dump Month Release: The film was finally released in August 2020, three years after it was shot. While late August is already perceived as a dump month, this was especially true for August 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, as theaters were closed in many major markets, and those that were open were running at limited capacity. Disney was forced to release the film theatrically due to a preexisting licensing deal with HBO, which prevented releasing the film on Disney-owned streaming services or premium video-on-demand. The film managed to open at #1, but with a tepid $7 million.
  • Executive Meddling: Attempted, but ultimately subverted, when the film was developed at Fox. Similar to what happened with Suicide Squad, positive reception to a horror-heavy trailer led to the decision to reshoot the film to be more like what the trailer promised, which was said to be somewhat unrepresentative of the kind of movie it actually was; the initial cut of the film was suggested to be a Coming of Age Story with horror elements. However, due to Disney's purchase of Fox and a series of massive delays to the film, these changes never materialized. Eventually, it was revealed by Josh Boone that the version that he filmed and slightly re-shot was the movie that he set out to make, implying that the massive re-shoots that were planned were studio-enforced rather than director-driven. In other words, Disney — who were ironically feared to be meddlers themselves in the film — appears to have been more supportive of the film that was finished than Fox was.
  • Fake American:
    • Charlie Heaton (Sam) is British.
    • Adam Beach (Dani's father) is Canadian.
  • Fake Nationality:
    • Brazilian Alice Braga is portraying the Puerto Rican Cecilia Reyes.
    • English Maisie Williams plays Scottish Wolfsbane. This isn't as jarring as the others, as England and Scotland are both constituent countries of the UK.
    • Two tribal examples: Dani is Cheyenne, but Blu Hunt is Lakota Sioux. Adam Beach, who plays her father (and would in-story presumably be Cheyenne as well) is Ojibwa.
  • Fake Russian: Anya Taylor-Joy (Magik) is American born Anglo-Argentine.
  • Late Export for You: This film didn't get a release in Japan other than being a Direct to Video release in November 17, 2020.
  • Meaningful Release Date: Appropriately for the more horror-themed direction this movie is taking, the teaser trailer was released on Friday the 13th in October 2017. The movie itself would've also been released on a Friday the 13th until the studio moved its release date (see below). Friday the 13th could also reflect the film’s cursed reputation.
  • Multiple Languages, Same Voice Actor: Henry Zaga dubbed over himself in Brazilian Portuguese.
  • Not Screened for Critics: Disney did not host any screening events or provide digital screeners in advance of the film's August 2020 theatrical release, prompting a review boycott from several outlets citing unsafe theater conditions due to the ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic.
  • The Other Darrin: Henry Zaga replaces Adan Canto (who played the character in X-Men: Days of Future Past) as Sunspot. Justified due to this version of Sunspot being younger than Canto's version.
  • Queer Character, Queer Actor: Lesbian Dani is played by queer actress Blu Hunt. Maisie Williams plays the lesbian Rahne, but Williams identifies as fluid and disregards any LGBT labels and has only dated men.
  • Release Date Change: This film was scheduled to be released on April 13, 2018, but ended up getting pushed back almost a full year later to February 22, 2019 to avoid coming too close to Deadpool 2. It was then moved again to a tentative August 2, 2019 release date to avoid running into Dark Phoenix. Another delay shifted it to to April 3, 2020 to allow the director to make adjustments to the film, which it was seemingly on target to hit... But then the curse continued as the COVID-19 Pandemic hit and pulled the movie from schedule, only for it to later get a final release date of August 28, 2020.
  • Screwed by the Lawyers: According to director Josh Boone, contracts that Fox signed and Disney inherited (including an output deal with HBO) required that the movie receive a theatrical release before it could be released on home media or streaming. This meant that Disney couldn't switch to a VOD release when the COVID-19 Pandemic forced them to delay the theatrical release (again).
  • Screwed by the Network: The film's various rescheduled release dates indicate that the studio, whether Fox or Disney, shows little faith in its ability to attract an audience, as these dates generally see the film going head-to-head with a major expected blockbuster. The February 22, 2019 date would've seen it opening against How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World and just a week after Fox's own Alita: Battle Angel; August 2, 2019 would've seen the film opening against Hobbs & Shaw and a week before the similarly-themed Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (2019); and April 3, 2020 would've seen it open directly between the planned releases of Disney's own Mulan and the James Bond film No Time to Die, and just two weeks after that of A Quiet Place Part II. The final release date, August 28th saw it open not only head-to-head with Bill & Ted Face the Music and one week before Tenet and Mulan, but also in the middle of the raging COVID-19 Pandemic. In many international territories, the film actually opened head-to-head with Tenet.
  • The Shelf of Movie Languishment: An odd example. Filming was completed in 2017, and this cut was given test screenings at that time, but various delays pushed the film's release back to 2019. Planned re-shoots based on feedback from the test screenings, along with accounting for the Disney buyout, kept getting delayed, until Fox decided to cancel them in March 2019 and release the film as shown in the 2017 test screenings, only to backtrack on that cancellation in May 2019 and have them set for "sometime [that] year", before backtracking again, likely because at that point the cast had visibly aged, and finally settling on an April 2020 release, only to be shelved again due to the coronavirus pandemic. It was finally released on August 28, 2020. As a result, the film was completed but unreleased for three years (the "Hell Has Frozen Over" tagline in the main page's image shows how infamous the delays got).
  • Stillborn Franchise: The New Mutants was intended to be the first installment in a trilogy of spin-offs, but a massive delay, combined with Disney's intention of starting fresh with the X-Men franchise, led to this being a standalone film.
  • Troubled Production: Or rather, troubled post-production, filled with delays and planned reshoots (either to make the project scarier or make the movie closer to the director's original vision) that never happened due to conjunction of factors, namely the actors getting busy, and more importantly, Disney's acquisition of Fox screwing over just about every project that studio had still in production. And just as the movie was about to get released, the COVID-19 pandemic led to yet another delay.
  • What Could Have Been:
    • Rosario Dawson was initially chosen for the part of Cecilia Reyes before Alice Braga was cast. However, Dawson dropped out of the project due to scheduling commitments to Luke Cage.
    • Sacha Baron Cohen had brief discussions for the role of Warlock in the film before the character was scrapped from the script.
    • Early drafts for the film featured James McAvoy returning as Professor X, along with Alexandra Shipp reprising her part as Storm from X-Men: Apocalypse.
    • The original stinger would have introduced Jon Hamm as Mister Sinister, before being changed to Antonio Banderas as Emmanuel da Costa, the father of Sunspot, which wound up never actually being filmed due to the Disney-Fox merger going through.
    • Sunspot's father Emmanuel da Costa would also be the antagonist in the film's proposed sequel, set in the family's native country, Brazil.
    • The film was meant to set up a New Mutants trilogy, with the second film introducing the alien robot Warlock and the third film to adapt the X-Men comic storyline "Inferno", where demons invade the Earth and Magik embraces her demonic heritage.
    • The early story plans included Storm as a "sadistic jailer," which everyone understandably very quickly decided against.

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