Posted in: Fox, Movies | Tagged: 20th century studios, alice braga, Antonio Banderas, Anya Taylor-Joy, Bill Sienkiewicz, Blu Hunt, charlie heaton, chris claremont, disney, fox, henry zaga, Knate Lee, maisie williams, The New Mutants

"The New Mutants": Sequel Was to Star Antonio Banderas, Director Says

With The New Mutants finally seeing the light of day after two years of delays, director Josh Boone had major plans. Among them, a sequel would have starred Antonio Banderas. Prior to Disney's purchase of FOX, Boone meant for the film to expand to a trilogy. He spoke Entertainment Weekly about what he wanted to do in the future films.

How Banderas Would Factor in "The New Mutants"

A post-credit scene planned for the end of the film never came to be. Banderas was in talks to play Emmanuel da Costa, father of Roberto/Sunspot (Henry Zaga).

"It was intentional that we didn't shoot it. We had always planned to have a tag at the end of the movie that introduced the villain for the next movie. We even had an actor cast, but because of the merger and because Marvel owns X-Men now and is going to do their own thing, there was no reason to go shoot it."

Boone talked about Emmanuel's link to the Hellfire Club in the comics. New Mutants: Brazil takes Roberto traveling to Brazil with the New Mutants to reunite with his estranged mother. Emmanuel is trying to kill her over his own business interests. Back in 2017, Boone sequenced his ideas out.

"Each one is its own unique kind of horror movie. The first one is this supernatural horror movie. I won't say what the other two are. They're horror movies but different horror movies each time."

Inspiration

The director compared his supernatural horror to A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987) and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975). Each of the teen mutants, who are held against their will at a secret facility, face the horrors of their past through personalized, terrifying visions. Boone said it's an arc inspired by the "Demon Bear" comics from writer Chris Claremont and artist Bill Sienkiewicz in the 1980s.

Since the purchase, Disney renamed FOX's major film studio wing to 20th Century Studios. Disney canceled numerous projects but spared The New Mutants. With the sequels, Boone originally planned to bring in other characters from the comics like Warlock and Karma.

"Karma was always going to be the villain in the second movie that would be absorbed into the group by the end. We had always wanted to bring Karma and Warlock into the second one when we couldn't do it in the first one. For us, we wanted that initial core team [for the first movie]. We just couldn't swap out Illyana. We felt like there was no reason to do [the movie] if we couldn't bring that character to life in the first one. Swapping out for someone like Magma" — a different comic book figure with the ability to transform her body into a "magma" state — "I don't feel fits very well in the kind of movie we were gonna make. I've got Bobby already. We tried to make a team that made sense."

Fingers Crossed for Success to Get Sequels

Boone hopes The New Mutants is a success so he can entertain his sequels.

"In our heart of hearts, we hope [The New Mutants] makes a bunch of money so that we can go make the second one. We're all just bummed at everything that happened. Just the merger and everything else. It had nothing to do with us personally and had an impact on every single movie at Fox at the time."

Co-written by Knate Lee, The New Mutants stars Anya Taylor-Joy, Maisie Williams, Alice Braga, Charlie Heaton, Blu Hunt, and Zaga.

The film comes to theaters on April 3.

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!