Will New Mutants Reshoots Set Up MCU Connections?

All eyes are on Fox and Disney as we enter 2018. While the recently announced deal won’t go through for nearly 2 years at the least, questions over just how drastically this will affect Fox’s lineup, particularly the X-Men, will linger. While the in-process movies appear to be entirely unaffected, a recent shuffling of release dates understandably raised some eyebrows, including Deadpool 2 shifting up two weeks in a move seen as favorable to Solo: A Star Wars Story (a Disney movie), and New Mutants being delayed by 10 months to February 2019.

While Deadpool’s new release date is interesting, the long delay for New Mutants is the most intreguing. Not only was the movie just 3 months from hitting the big screen, but marketing had already been scaling up. It’s not clear exactly how the change will affect the marketing plans, but with one trailer already out and a regular release of character posters, the movie is now in an awkward position of probably cooling off its campaign until fall 2018.

The even bigger question, though, is what instigated the delay? There were no rumors of serious behind the scenes issues and if that was the reason for the delay, the date change would have happened a lot sooner. The initial word on the street says the movie was being test screened with a positive reception, but the studio thought the movie’s horror elements could be played up even more. It’s not clear if this simply means re-editing and post-production work or additional reshoots, but the fact that it’s delayed a full 10 months suggests something a little more intensive.

It’s at this point that things don’t seem to completely line up. By all accounts, New Mutants already appeared to embrace the horror movie approach. Not only did the director already promise this a number of times, but the trailers also clearly pushed that aesthetic. Considering the looming Disney acquisition and (assumed) eventual assimilation of the X-Men into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there’s some room to speculate that the long delay is for more than the addition of some jump scares. What if they are also retrofitting some connections to the MCU?

ARE THEY REALLY JUST MAKING NEW MUTANTS SCARIER? (THIS PAGE)

COULD NEW MUTANTS RESHOOTS CONNECT THE X-MEN TO THE MCU?

ARE THEY REALLY JUST MAKING NEW MUTANTS SCARIER?

New Mutants Fox trailer Dani Moonstar Mirage Will New Mutants Reshoots Set Up MCU Connections?

As already stated, New Mutants already looks plenty scary. Fox has already proven with Logan and Deadpool that its not scared of pushing genre (or rating) limits, so the notion that the horror in New Mutants was somehow dumbed down to begin with seems like a departure from this strategy. Both of those movies could have, hypothetically, “worked” as PG-13 movies, as most superhero movies do, but Fox knew from conception that playing it safe would limit their potential, so it stands to reason that New Mutants was written with the same considerations.

Given, the two movies New Mutants supposedly used for this justification are IT and Get Out, which are both R-rated horror movies (particularly the former) that made it big at the box office (again, particularly the former). New Mutants hasn’t yet been rated in its current form, but if one had to guess, it appears to be playing within the limits of PG-13. If that’s the case, and the studio truly believes the better (and more lucrative) version of the movie is R-rated, then the decision makes a lot of sense.

Coming only a few months before the movie’s release, this decision, even if it’s the right one, doesn’t seem to present the full story. Barring major story changes (which this rumor doesn’t suggest are necessary), simply pumping up the scares conceivably be accomplished with minimal reshoots and minimal (if any) delay.

X Men The New Mutants Dani Moonstar Will New Mutants Reshoots Set Up MCU Connections?

That being said, one major reason for such a lengthy delay to New Mutant’s release date is that any minor delay to the original April 13th release date would have pushed it into summer release territory. With Infinity War, Solo: A Star Wars Story, and Deadpool 2 in May, summer movie season will officially be in full swing, meaning competition will be pretty stacked. At that point, a 10-month delay is likely preferable to dropping opposite to another big summer blockbuster.

Even so, 10 additional months means the opportunity for even bigger changes. In light of the assumed eventual integration of the X-Men into the MCU, those 10 months could be used to accomplish far more than increasing the horror. It could also sow the seeds of an MCU crossover.

COULD NEW MUTANTS RESHOOTS CONNECT THE X-MEN TO THE MCU?

As the newest X-Men spin-off, and with apparent plans for the future, it’s only logical to assume that New Mutants will need to be prepared to assimilate into the MCU or cease to exist. It’s not known how Marvel Studios will handle ownership of the X-Men rights, but Kevin Feige has said he’s excited for them to come home, meaning they will likely become a part of the fold. It’s possible Fox will mostly be allowed to stay its current course, with “connections” being established in a similar fashion to the Marvel Netflix shows, or, in a much less connected way, follow a “multiverse” connection more akin to the way the Arrowverse brought in Supergirl, allowing it to function entirely outside the day-to-day events of the Arrowverse, but still bringing her in for crossovers.

While both of those approaches would make sense, the X-Men aren’t exactly the Guardians of the Galaxy in terms of Marvel prominence, so simply including them in some secluded corner of the larger MCU when B and C list characters are sharing the “main” universe spotlight feels like the wrong direction. The X-Men will have to join the Avengers eventually, and they’ll either have to reboot or merge universes to do it. While a reboot might be the cleaner way of accomplishing this, the X-Men film universe has always been about the characters more than the world. After all, it’s the characters that are (mostly) persistent. The world around them has been inconsistent at best and outright rebooted in Days of Future Past.

Unlike the MCU, where the larger world and global events are mostly consistent from film to film, the X-Men universe could be totally abandoned, bringing the established characters into the MCU. Whether this is done by time travel, jumping into an alternate dimension, or some other cataclysmic event, something in the X-Men’s future will need to change, and New Mutants has an opportunity to plant those seeds.

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No, New Mutants likely won’t be the primary catalyst for this change, but they do have a potential puzzle piece to make it happen. Deadpool 2 is introducing Cable, a walking time paradox; Dark Phoenix will bring the powers of the Phoenix Force, including the power to travel through time and dimension; and New Mutants introduces Magik, AKA Illyana Rasputina, who also has powers over time and dimension. There’s even a Kitty Pryde movie in development, and while her powers are a little more straightforward in the comics, she’s already been used to alter the timeline of the X-Men franchise in Days of Future Past (and she also has a lot of involvement with the New Mutants in the comics). With the Infinity Gauntlet already in play on the MCU side of things, we’re already on the verge of some universe shaping events all around. The question is just how the universe will be shaped when it’s all done.

So what’s the true reason for the reshoots? At this point it’s all just rumor and speculation. The suggestion that it’s just to add some scares feels like an incomplete answer, while some sort of grand plan to plant seeds of an MCU integration is also fairly premature. In light of the Disney acquisition, any changes on Fox’s part are going to be examined under a microscope until Kevin Feige and company announce their grand plans for the X-Men.