It seems as though 20th Century Fox is in major remix mode with their ‘X-Men’ franchise. That may have something to do with Disney’s acquisition. Just last week, Fox once again rescheduled their upcoming films, moving ‘X-Men: Dark Phoenix’ to June 7, 2019, after already pushing it from November of this year to February of next.
Another film in this franchise, ‘New Mutants’ was supposed to have opened this past April but was also moved to February 2019, then August ’19. Originally, these shifts were credited to scheduling conflicts. But now that ‘Dark Phoenix’ has undergone extensive reshoots, with more scheduled for ‘New Mutants’, there might be more to the story.
Director Josh Boone recently commented:
“It’s the kind of movie that could go R, or it could be a hard PG-13. As I was saying before in terms of subgenres or the genre, it is obviously teased as a horror film, and most horror films these days are R-rated, but it stars a very young cast, so we’ll see. It really is what the movie wants to be. The studio is open to either rating… Traditionally, superhero movies are PG-13 other than Logan and the Deadpool movies, and generally, horror films are R-rated, so we’ll see where this one falls. It is a very scary, edgy movie.”
From the start, Boone has maintained that his plans for ‘New Mutants’ and possible sequels, were to explore the horror genre. Initially, it was declared that the ‘New Mutants’ reshoots would delve further, making it scarier. These reshoots, by the way, have not yet happened.
Boone isn’t quite accurate, though. The majority of recent horror movies have been PG-13, because the core audience for them is teenage girls, who can’t get into R-rated movies. Some examples of PG-13 horror flicks are ‘The Grudge’, ‘Happy Death Day’, ‘Insidious’, ‘The Last Exorcism’, ‘Lights Out’, ‘A Quiet Place’, and ‘The Ring’, plus any applicable sequels.
And while ‘Deadpool’, ‘Deadpool 2’ and ‘Logan’ were released with R ratings, Fox just announced plans to release a PG-13 ‘Deadpool’ film on December 21. While they haven’t revealed what this movie is, most assume it is a sanitized version of ‘Deadpool 2’, indicating a shift away from harder comic book movies. Once again, this may have something to do with Disney’s acquisition.
‘New Mutants’ stars Alice Braga, Charlie Heaton, Blu Hunt, Anya Taylor-Joy, Maisie Williams and Henry Zaga and will now open on August 2, 2019.
Source: Collider
