Anya Taylor-Joy confirms reshoots for New Mutants will add a new character

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

Had events proceeded as planned, we would be just a little over a month out from the release of THE NEW MUTANTS, but Twentieth Century Fox ended up pushing the release back by ten months. Word was that the studio found that the film wasn't scary enough and wanted to embrace the horror elements as well as beef up the scares in the wake of the success of IT and GET OUT. Reshoots for THE NEW MUTANTS will get underway this summer, and it had been rumoured that a new character would be inserted into the film. While speaking with The Playlist, Anya Taylor-Joy seemed to confirm that a new character will indeed be added during the upcoming reshoots.

I do think that there is a great responsibility to make sure the movie is done right and that we deliver the fans something that they can all feel happy about and excited about. So, I don’t think it being delayed is a bad thing because it’s definitely more important to make sure that we get it right than rushing to make a date. So, hopefully, all of these reshoots and adding of the new character that will give the fans an altogether satisfactory, wonderful product.

Who that character will be hasn't been revealed, but it has been rumoured that it will be Warlock, the shape-shifting techno-organic alien. Although Anya Taylor-Joy seems confident that the reshoots are for the best, she did express her frustration with the delays. "Well, the only thing that I could say, without being in trouble, is that it being delayed is disappointing, frustrating in fact," Taylor-Joy said. "Because we were all very excited for it to be released on April 13th, and I don’t mean just disappointing for me, but I’m sure there are a lot of other fans that were looking forward to seeing it." Director Josh Boone had previously said that THE NEW MUTANTS would be "a full-fledged horror movie set within the X-Men universe," and later added that the film will probably be the "hardest PG-13 ever made. I mean, we’ve pushed it. The horror is pretty dark, but there’s also an emotional core, too. If I can scare you and make you cry: that’s the goal." Fingers crossed.

Assuming THE NEW MUTANTS is a success, it's likely that we'll see more horror-infused entries in the X-MEN franchise as Josh Boone originally brought the concept to Fox as a "trilogy of films," all of which are based on Bill Sienkiewicz and Chris Claremont's run on the series (The New Mutants vol. 1 #18–31, 35–38).

These are all going to be horror movies, and they're all be their own distinct kind of horror movies. This is certainly the ‘rubber-reality’ supernatural horror movie. The next one will be a completely different kind of horror movie. Our take was just go examine the horror genre through comic book movies and make each one its own distinct sort of horror film. Drawing from the big events that we love in the comics.

THE NEW MUTANTS is set for a February 22, 2019 release.