A look back on the confusing, troubled timeline of The New Mutants

The New Mutants has had a troubled timeline filled with delays and reschedulings. Here’s a complete look back at The New Mutants’ timeline.

There’s probably no movie in recent cinema more ill-fated than Fox and Disney’s The New Mutants. What began as an interesting spinoff to the X-Men movie franchise ultimately turned into a headache for movie producers and nothing short of a meme for fans constantly waiting for the movie to come out.

One would think a movie like The New Mutants would be fast-tracked to be released. It’s about superheroes — it’s from Marvel, nonetheless. It has a shining cast including leads from Game of Thrones and Stranger Things. And it’s giving the audience something we haven’t really seen before: a horror superhero story. What could go wrong?

The answer to that is “everything.” With reshoots, acquisitions, and a global pandemic in its way, the timeline for The New Mutants is more confusing than that of the X-Men’s after Days of Future Past. So we’re here to breakdown The New Mutants’ timeline, how many times it’s been delayed and every release date so far.

A timeline of The New Mutants release dates

Release date 1: April 13, 2018

This all began as a pleasant tale of bringing a new X-Men story to life. Fox’s staple superhero universe had been doing quite well at the time when the movie was in the early stages of production. Not only was it in the middle of the soft reboot of the franchise starting with X-Men: First Class and the random Wolverine spinoffs, but Fox was about to get another success on its doorstep: Deadpool.

Certainly, it was the best of times; it was the worst of times. After The Fault in Our Stars in 2014, the director, Josh Boone, pitched The New Mutants with co-writer Knate Lee Fox. And in 2015, Boone was brought on to direct the movie.

Eventually, filming began in July 2017, and the cast of Maisie Williams, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Heaton, Alice Braga, Blu Hunt and Henry Zaga were all eventually confirmed. And through the movie’s initial filming until September 2017, things were pretty uneventful. Fox even released a trailer for the movie on Oct. 13, 2017.

Things remained fine until January 2018, when the movie was pushed back to allow Deadpool 2 to come out first and avoid internal competition with themselves (so the movies didn’t come out at the same time).

Release date 2:  Feb. 22, 2019

Now moved a little under a year from its first release date, this seemed like a relatively good time period to give the team some much-needed time for reshoots.

The problem is, the reshoots were extensive and, as Cinemablend mentions, in March 2018, the movie was shuffled around to make space for Dark Phoenix. That movie has a troubled timeline of its own and eventually opened June 7, 2019.

Release date 3: Aug. 2, 2019

And so, onward to the later 2019 release date it moved. But there was much buzz about the movie needing more reshoots than fans originally thought. It was reported by Collider that half of the movie probably needed to be reshot. All that was on top of getting the cast’s schedules organized so that the teams would be available to shoot together again.

In the Collider story, released in March 2018, they reported Fox wanted to give the movie its own distinct feel like Logan and Deadpool. And part of that included the movie going all-in on the horror angle — with test screenings for the movie apparently not being scary enough. By March 2019, The Hollywood Reporter revealed that no such reshoots had even been planned yet.

With the extensive reshoots in limbo — apparently involving lots of special effects work to be done as well, the Fox-Disney merger was also looming on the horizon. That would ultimately give Disney top say in the development of ongoing projects. That acquisition was ultimately completed on March 20, 2019. Unfortunately, according to Variety in August 2019, “the studio [was] unimpressed with New Mutants, an X-Men spinoff with a haunted-house vibe, and [believed] it has limited box office potential.”

Once Disney reworked its new schedule and released it in May of 2019, it had seemed like the war was over and The New Mutants finally had a locked-in release date.

Release date 4: April 3, 2020

At last, a final cut of the movie was ready, and The New Mutants could be released in theaters. Come Jan. 6, 2020, a new official trailer was even released for the movie. Sure, the actors looked a little younger compared to their selves now. But it was rewarding to finally see that the movie was coming together. (Maniacal laughter looms in the background).

All was well until… enter, stage left: a global pandemic. By mid-March 2020, the novel coronavirus outbreak had been upgraded to a global pandemic, and it was certain that the movie industry would be hit hard by this. Public spaces were being closed, theaters included, and one by one, studios were announcing its movie delays for the spring and summer of 2020. And thus, on March 12, 2020, Disney had announced that The New Mutants, along with a string of other movies like Mulan, would be delayed until further notice.

Two months later, after radio silence — and still in the midst of shut-ins for a majority of the world — a new (hopefully last) date was announced.

Release date 5: Aug. 28, 2020

On May 13, 2020, The New Mutants received its post-COVID-19 release date. Many had suspected Disney would shelf the movie for Disney+ or Hulu, or release it on premium video on demand to rent — as many other movies opted to do in the meantime. But a theatrical release is still in the books.

It’s still unclear whether movie theaters will be ready to go and be fully operational by the late-summer date. And it’s also hard to quantify just how many people would feel comfortable heading back to movie theaters and other public spaces once it’s safer to do so. Some might throw caution to the wind, but others may be eager to return to these public spaces once again. So, for now, The New Mutants will be among the small list of movies to make up the late-summer 2020 box office, and one of the first films to hit theaters in quite a long time.

Whether this final date will be solidified feels like it’s up to the coin toss of chance itself.