As about as diehard an X-Men fan as one can be, news like this makes me sit up in my chair. Reports over the last few weeks have suggested 2016's X-Men: Apocalypse would be the end of Bryan Singer's version of the mutant team, which could mean just about anything. Hugh Jackman is done, Jennifer Lawrence is finished, all the old stars are leaving. So what's next? Does this mean 20th Century Fox is rebooting everything or just shifting gears? What we know now is that the saga of Marvel's favorite mutants is far from finished.
Josh Boone, the director behind The Fault In Our Stars, is on board to co-write and direct The New Mutants, based on the comic series created by X-Men legend Chris Claremont. The project was first hinted at three years ago and is only now coming to light. It's too simplistic to say the New Mutants are "younger versions of the X-Men", they're more than that. They were originally the students of Charles Xavier, and many of them grew up to become prominent X-Men and Avengers. The team was trained by Magneto for a time, as well, but after growing tired of the ideological split between their two former mentors, the team fell under the militaristic leadership of Cable and became X-Force.
Remember that Jeff Wadlow had been hired to write an X-Force movie a couple of years ago, and this may be part of leading into that. It was in the pages of New Mutants that we were first introduced to Deadpool, and the character has some significant ties to the team.
That's not all, though, as Deadline says Boone is also on Marvel's list to direct their upcoming Spider-Man film. So basically Boone is the guy studios want for all their teenage-centered projects, which makes sense given what he accomplished with The Fault In Our Stars. Nobody even talks about his terrible first film, Stuck In Love.
Whatever happens, New Mutants isn't going to happen anytime soon. Boone's next film is The Vampire Chronicles, based on the Anne Rice novels; he's also got a massive adaptation of Stephen King's The Stand. So he's going to be plenty busy for quite awhile.
