There has apparently been a resurgence of drive-in theaters here in the PNW. This actually seems like the perfect movie to try one out.
More color on why New Mutants won’t premier online.
Early on in Collider’s chat with the New Mutants director and cast, he asked whether there had ever been a discussion with 20th Century Studios to release New Mutants on Disney+ or Hulu, two streaming platforms under the Disney umbrella. Boone’s explanation on a streaming release isn’t currently being explored makes total sense. As he told Collider, “With most movies, you sign contracts that guarantee a theatrical release, so it needs to open to ever go digital in the first place. We just, too, would like to see people to see it in the theater. But it needs to obviously be at the right time when it’s safe to go back.”
It’s out in my local drive-in this Thursday. After my great experience with Peninsula, drive-ins may become a new weekly habit!
This is coming to theatres here in nz next month. I am super keen
Day before launch blame game.
Focused on a disparate team of Gen-Z mutants struggling to understand and control their dangerous powers while facing down a demonic foe, The New Mutants was green-lighted as a “hybrid-horror Breakfast Club movie.” It was actually set in the 1980s in oblique homage during the script stages, but most elements of that John Hughes–directed generational touchstone wound up being scrapped before the cameras rolled. However, according to sources familiar with New Mutants’ production , Boone and his co-writer, Knate Lee, were reluctant or outright unwilling to implement such script changes requested by the studio, requiring round after round of rewrites and one intervention-like roundtable read just before filming. Once principal photography was finished, Fox was so displeased with the initial cut the studio discussed throwing the entire movie out to “start over” with a total reshoot. The controversial finished product — a PG-13 dark fantasy pulsed with “jump scares” if not outright horror or gore — then fell victim to the studio merger and the ensuing uncertainty over “What now constitutes a Disney film?” Answer: not this.
Trouble was, Lee and Boone’s initial 2015 screenplay drafts failed to deliver the kind of vividly drawn teen drama the filmmaker had pitched to the studio. Moreover, the script’s crude humor needed toning down. “Josh was sending around posters where [the New Mutants ] characters are put into the Breakfast Club poster. The Legend of Billie Jean was another movie he was always bringing up,” says another source with knowledge of the production. “Punk-rock-y, rebellious teens are already baked into the X-Men, but here, one of the characters was a misogynist and graffiti-ing his penis on stuff. There were head scratchers. Like, That’s not going to work. ”
Reshoots — or, at a bare minimum, “pickups” or “additional photography,” as the industry jargon goes — are common for movies with high-stakes IP, but according to studio sources and Boone himself, no additional New Mutants scenes were shot despite rampant rumors to the contrary. At issue: Over the span of Disney’s nearly two-year acquisition of 21st Century Fox, which was ostensibly responsible for several of the film’s release delays, Mutants cast members had aged to a point that made shooting continuity impossible. “I’ll tell you this: If there hadn’t been a merger, I’m sure we would’ve done reshoots the same way every movie does pickups,” Boone told EW.com. “We didn’t even do that, because by the time the merger was done and everything was settled, everybody’s older.”
My local Alamo is doing a drive in pop up theater and they’re showing this the first two nights. I tried to get tickets but it was sold out. Possibly a reflection of the desire to get out of the house as much as a desire to see the movie itself.
Wow, it sounds like this is going to be hideous. Darn. I was looking forward to it.
Do movies released right now need all this song and dance to justify poor performance? Unless it’s to justify being terrible…
In this case, the backstage drama has been ongoing for over three years.
This was so much fun to read. Troubled movie productions at the major studios are just fascinating, especially considering how much oversight franchise licencees and producers presumably have over the project and the creative staff during both pre-and-post production. I still don’t understand why they would go ahead with filming before they had a script they were happy with and a tone they could market.
Back when the stakes were considerably lower, such as Ghost in the Noonday Sun (1974), an infamous $2 million flop (obviously still costly but not comparable to a contemporary mid-tier flick’s budget) by Peter Medak covered in the recent doco The Ghost of Peter Sellers, I could see producers and a director gambling on an incomplete screenplay in hopes that the on-screen talent would be able to improvise it into something passable, but with a genre studio flick, hell no!
I bet Boone must be thrilled he has The Stand in the can to soften what will surely be a major hit to his career.
Apparently, it’s not that bad. Average, cliche and predictable though:
I saw this last night. I don’t know how spoiler-averse everyone is, but it wasn’t terrible. Here are my observations and criticisms:
- It actually tied into the X-Men Universe more than I thought it would. Then again, I was expecting it to not tie in at all.
- Some of the mystery is spoiled if you’ve read the comics.
- The horror elements really suffer from not being an R-rated movie. It feels like they could have done more (or been more interesting) if they were let off the leash.
- Illyana Rasputin’s origin from the comics is really handwaved away here. If I didn’t know the real origin, I would have left the movie going, “Whaaaaat?!?”
- There are some ridiculous-dumb moments, but there are also some ridiculous-funny and ridiculous-great moments. I imagine I’ll remember the good parts and forget the bad parts.
Overall I’d give it an 8/13. If you’re interested, roll the dice and go see it. Your mileage may vary. Offer void in UT, SD, and NH.
And Eight out of Thirteen? What kind of personal rating system do you have?
There was an old website called Movie Critic that used this system:
Hated It, Tolerated It, Liked It, Really Liked It, Loved It.
…plus two notches in between each one. For me, it’s easy to go “I liked it, plus a little bump for some clever things.”
But if it makes it easier, by the Tom Chick scale, 3/5 stars.
3/5 in units of what, Fun? 3 Funs out of 5?
Three visually stunnings out of five fun factors.
3 Monkeys shot out of 5.
Turns out this is playing at a semi-local drive-in! We’d have to take a ferry to get there, but it could work. Problem is, may gal starts a new job on Tuesday, and has her kids this weekend. Since Spider Man: Far From Home was too much for them, I’m kind of thinking this is out. Hopefully it’ll be playing another week…
Definitely not terrible. A perfectly serviceable comic movie.
Yeah, I almost wish it were a little worse, just for the entertainment value. It definitely didn’t need to be delayed for two years though.