New Mutants director wanted Sacha Baron Cohen to play Warlock

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

THE NEW MUTANTS is finally going to grace us with its presence on August 28, 2020, and we can tell this is true because the promotional train for the movie has finally taken off. We've already got a series of new posters, tv spots, and cast interviews, and with that comes new info about what director Josh Boone may have wanted for this film and beyond. According to a new report, Boone wanted BORAT star, Sacha Baron Cohen, to appear as the New Mutants fan favorite, Warlock.

The report states that the idea was to have the comedic actor essentially be the "Andy Serkis of Warlock," with the intention being for the actor to perform using motion capture technology similar to that used by Andy Serkis as Gollum in LORD OF THE RINGS and as Caesar in the most recent PLANET OF THE APES trilogy. Ultimately, the character's inclusion was scrapped due to budget constraints, with director Josh Boone forced to choose between using Warlock or the Demon Bear.

For those unfamiliar with the character of Warlock from the New Mutants comics, he is an alien being who hails from an unidentified world in an unspecified location in outer space. Warlock's race is a sentient form of "techno-organic" life, which resembles circuitry and machinery in various ways. The character is an eccentric one, with the mind of a child, and the casting of Cohen in the role, an actor best known for his comedic roles in the likes of BORAT, Ali G, and MADAGASCAR, would certainly have been an inspired addition to the ensemble.

This is not the first time that Josh Boone has discussed his intentions of using Warlock in THE NEW MUTANTS with the director recently laying out his plan for a proposed trilogy. "So our plan was always to have Warlock come back in the next one and try to tell his story." He went on to describe his plans for a trilogy with Warlock by saying "They were all supposed to be kind of separate horror genre films: the first one's like a rubber reality horror movie, the second one was supposed to be an alien invasion movie with Warlock, and then the third one was going to take all these elements from the X-Men crossover from the late '80s and early '90s called Inferno to be a kind of supernatural, apocalyptic horror movie. That was the plan."

THE NEW MUTANTS stars Maisie Williams, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Heaton, Alice Braga, Blu Hunt, and Henry Zaga, and follows five young mutants, with each discovering their abilities while being held in a secret facility against their will. They must band together and fight to escape their past sins and save themselves. For now, I don't want to wonder about what is to come or might have been. I just want to finally see this film and hope that it's good. After this three year wait, I think these modest expectations are warranted.