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Josh Boone Talks Horror Influences For X-Men: The New Mutants

Published Sat, 14 Oct 2017 16:08:05 -0500

We have finally have the trailer for X-Men: New Mutants, so that means it's time to start talking about what is looking like one of the more interesting superhero movies coming out in 2018. Director Josh Boone recently spoke to IGN about what influenced the movie and how he pitched such a tonally different project to Fox. He said:

"Well, I really think it's because of what you said. I mean… FOX made Deadpool and Logan and they were sort of so tonally different they felt embolden to let us go make it different, and make have its own distinct tone and identity. I think of the mainline X-Men movies more as grand operative science-fiction films. This is much more of a performance-driven horror film."

When asked about influenced the movie, in terms of story and in tone, Boone spoke about the run of New Mutants comics — but also of a few movies, as well:

"Our whole pitch for this series was based on Bill Sienkiewicz run with Chris Claremont [The New Mutants vol. 1 #18–31, 35–38], so it's very much when New Mutants became dark and surreal and more horror driven.

We were incredibly inspired by the Demon Bear story which is probably the best, well-known New Mutants story. We also drew on movies like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Stephen King stuff, and even Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors.

Darabont wrote that back in the day and that was very inspiring to us. If we'd had just done New Mutants the comic, it would've been very much set-up like an X-Men movie in the mansion with Professor X and all that. So we really wanted to do something different. So kind of what we brought to Sienkiewicz and Claremont's take on New Mutants was this idea they're all in a psych-hole for mutants."

The faces in the walls look very Nightmare on Elm Street-esque, and Boone reveals that it was intentional. He also revealed that this was all shot on real sets:

"Yes, that's my homage to Mr Craven, and we did it practically. They did that stupid remake of Nightmare and they did it with CGI, and I was like how did they do it in the original. They got rubber walls.

90% of this movie was shot on real locations. We did as many of the effects practically as we could. It has some big visual effect stuff as well, but we really tried to do everything we could possibly do real so it would feel a little bit more like those movies we liked and were inspired by. 10% of the movie was green screen and nothing else really. We shot on in a 150 year-old mental hospital that'd been closed for 50 years."

Thus far, the reaction to The New Mutants trailer has been one of surprise and intrigue. There were plenty of people that didn't know that this was going to be a horror movie and are now very interested.

Summary: Five young mutants, just discovering their abilities while held in a secret facility against their will, fight to escape their past sins and save themselves.

X-Men: The New Mutants, directed by Josh Boone, stars Anya Taylor-Joy, Alice Braga, Maisie Williams, Charlie Heaton, Blu Hunt, and Henry Zaga. It will be released on April 18th, 2018.

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