A while back it was announced that Fault In Our Stars director Josh Boone, would tackle the X-Men spin-off team New Mutants for 20th Century Fox. He apparently had finished a draft of the script last year, but seems oddly focused on other projects. This gives us the impression he might not end-up directing New Mutants, unless Fox is willing to delay the film’s a couple of years. Considering that Josh has since jumped aboard a handful of other studio films, that sound like they’ll be happening first.
Josh had agreed to write and direct a feature version of Stephen King’s The Stand for CBS Films, which already placed in question if he would stick around long enough to make New Mutants for Fox.
Deadline has now learned Boone placed The Stand on the back-burner for now, to focus on King’s Revival, which he’s already penned a script for the adaption with hopes it’ll be his next film. It’s said to possibly get picked-up by Universal, he’s already writing and directing a film for the studio, with Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles.
Looking all these other projects piling-up, it starts to look like Boone’s contribution to New Mutants might only be on the script side of things. Even though, we’re happy to see Josh landing these excellent projects. I just don’t see Fox waiting two or three years for him to make this film, when they seemingly need to have X-Men releases ready for 2018 and 2019.
It’s possible that Bryan Singer could end-up directing New Mutants, since we’ve heard rumors of another X-Men film coming from Singer soon, and possibly shooting again in Montreal. That film possibly taking the mysterious release date on July 13th, 2018. We did think that New Mutants was a clear frontrunner for that release spot as well, allowing for production to take place in 2017. It very well could be that Singer ends up making New Mutants, not Boone.
We already saw Singer tease the New Mutants lineup in Days of Future Past with the introduction of team members Blink, Warpath and Sunspot, which I assume could make the New Mutants lineup as well.
The only two existing X-Men adaptations known to be in-development, that don’t have directors include X-Force (needs a complete script overhaul) and New Mutants, the latter seemingly has a completed draft via Boone. Then again, Apocalypse was announced of of left field, and it could happen with a new unannounced installment.
However, Fox isn’t really known to wait for directors, as they’ve shown with replacing Bryan Singer on X3,replacing Matthew Vaughn on X-Men: Days of Future Past, and Rupert Wyatt on Gambit, along with countless other high-profile projects. I’d like to think they’d make an acceptation for Josh, but that never seems to be case, and they’re not above quickly replacing a director on a moment’s notice to keep on schedule.
Boone still would be apart of New Mutants, if they use enough of his script for the final film and he still is representing the project on his Twitter account. I’m just not convinced Fox will wait for him, or that Josh stay on as the director, now looking at these three other projects he’s attached himself to, he just seems way too busy to get around to it in time. He could still direct if Revival was a quick enough production, but seems unlikely he’d be ready in time.
This wouldn’t be the first time a creative person was hired to make an X-Men spin-off only to leave for greener pastures. Jeff Wadlow had been tasked to write X-Force for Fox, with the hopes he’d end-up directing. When the project was stalled to focus on other X-Men films, he left to help Sony write their Masters of The Universe reboot. We recently learned from Rob Liefeld that Wadlow’s X-Force script has become pointless due to similarities to X-Men: Apocalypse, and this seemingly explains why the studio pumped-the-breaks on X-Force‘s development.
Do you think Josh Boone is too busy to make New Mutants?
SOURCE: DEADLINE