It’s been a long road for The New Mutants to arrive in movie theaters. Originally intended for release back in April of 2018, the film has been delayed several times since then. Some of the earliest rumors about the film’s delay came from a reported need to do reshoots that would add a new character to the movie, while other reports indicated the reshoots were intended to make the movie scarier. But director Josh Boone has finally spoken up to clear the air, saying that no reshoots were ever completed.

Entertainment Weekly recently spoke to Josh Boone, who has been patiently waiting to see his movie released. During the interview, Boone flat out said the purported reshoots never took place.

“Everybody said we did reshoots! We’ve never done reshoots. And 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. We didn’t even do that because by the time the merger was done and everything was settled, everybody’s older.”

Boone is talking about cast members Maisie Williams, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Heaton, Henry Zaga and Blu Hunt, who are playing Wolfsbane, Magik, Cannonbal, Sunspot and Mirage respectively. They’re all now two years older, and some of them would have trouble passing for teens after that much time has passed.

Maisie Williams, who was the source of reports saying the movie was going to be made scarier with reshoots, backs up Boone’s claims too. The Game of Thrones actress says:

“The movie is exactly the movie we set out to make. I was nervous when they were talking about reshooting or re-editing that it was gonna be very different, but honestly, it’s exactly what we set out to do.”

Williams was in a position where she wasn’t getting information from the production itself while they waited for the merger and the movie to be completed in post-production. Sometimes the only information she got was from other reports online, which is where some of the confusion likely came from.

This is a surprising revelation though, especially since as recently as May of last year, producer Simon Kinberg was still talking about reshoots, and that was after the merger between 20th Century Fox and The Walt Disney Company was completed. Perhaps Boone is only talking about reshoots that would have happened after primary production, as in the traditional pickups. But Boone says it was the merger the delayed everything:

“We had heard nothing because of the merger. It was radio silence for about a year where we had no new information at all. When they called me right before I went to go make The Stand and said, ‘Would you come finish the movie?’ I said, ‘I would fuckin’ love to come finish the movie!’”

Upon getting back to work, the film needed to have visual effects completed, which is why the first trailer that was released all the way back in the fall of 2017 showed barely anything from the second half of the movie. But the delay might have helped the movie in the long run, as Boone says, “Knate [Lee], my co-writer, and I, we hadn’t seen it in a year. We did a bunch of things here and there [in the editing room] that we hadn’t thought about or noticed a year before.”

This could all just be damage control so people don’t completely disregard this movie when it finally comes out next month. But it would be nice if this movie’s production wasn’t nearly as troubled as it seemed. It’s just a shame that this will be the final movie with ties to Fox’s original X-Men franchise, which likely means it doesn’t matter how good the movie is, because Marvel Studios has their own plans for the trajectory of all Marvel movie franchises from here on out, including an inevitable reboot of X-Men.

Held in a secret facility against their will, five new mutants have to battle the dangers of their powers, as well as the sins of their past. They aren’t out to save the world — they’re just trying to save themselves.

The New Mutants will finally open in theaters on April 3, 2020.

The post ‘The New Mutants’ Never Underwent Any Reshoots, Contrary to Ongoing Rumors and Reports appeared first on /Film.