With ‘X-Men: Apocalypse‘ finishing off the second ‘X-Men’ trilogy, it looks as if Fox wants to expand their mutant line by adding in ‘The New Mutants.’ We’ve already seen that ‘Deadpool‘ and ‘Gambit‘ are coming out with a rumored ‘X-Force’ film so throwing in this set of Xavier’s students is a good way to introduce a few more to the cinematic universe who ended up as X-Men. (An interesting side note is that this comic series also gave us the first appearance of Deadpool. Even though he’ll clearly be appearing in his own movie before this is released.)

The film is currently set to be written and directed by Josh Boone (‘The Fault In Our Stars’) who already has a full plate right now with ‘The Stand‘ reboot which Warner Brothers is releasing and Universal’s ‘The Vampire Chronicles‘ which is bringing Lestat back to the big screen. With everything else on his plate I wouldn’t be surprised if this will be as far out as 2018 assuming the studio continues releasing profitable X-Men films through that time. Knate Gwaltney will be co-writing the film with Simon Kinberg and Lauren Shuler Donner both on board to produce.

This was an idea that we first heard rumored back in 2012, so it’s good to see that there is finally some progress on the film.

The ‘New Mutants’ first showed up in a graphic novel in 1982 and there was enough interest to have a monthly book starting the following year. While many of the New Mutants have died or lost their powers as time went on, we’ve also seem quite a few big names from from the team including Magik who is Colossus’ younger sister and was recently part of the X-Men as well as Warlock who ended up being a mainstay in the ‘X-Factor’ universe. The initial team though was made up of Cannonball, Sunspot, Wolfsbane, Karma, Dani Moonstar, and of course Professor X.

With the ‘X-Men’ franchise trying to push around recasting and new characters, I personally suspect that we’ll end having a high chance of seeing: Blink, Boom-Boom, Cannonball, Magik, Warlock, and Sunspot who later became X-Men and potentially Cable, Warlock, and Shatterstar who ended up as part of X-Force. These characters all had pretty strong fan followings at one point or another.

According to Kinberg, “We’re so excited to explore this new part of the X-Men universe, and so excited to do it with Josh, who is uniquely suited to tell this story about young characters.”

While it’ll clearly be awhile before we see this band of mutants it is definitely a project we should be looking forward to. Unless of course it just happens to get pushed back like ‘X-Force’ apparently was.

Sources: Collider, Slash Film