Based on everything we've heard about Simon Kinberg's New Mutants film, the mutants of the X-Men will be going someplace they've never been before: the realm of horror. That was always obvious when one of the villains was revealed to be the Demon Bear, who was part of the horror-centric "Demon Bear" storyline from the 1980s, and now Fox CEO Stacey Snider has more details on the film's tone, comparing it to a genre classic.
"Great effort has been put into making sure they’re differentiated. New Mutants is about these teenagers who are just coming into their powers. It’s like watching mutants go through adolescence and they have no impulse control, so they’re dangerous. The only solution is to put them in a Breakfast Club detention/Cuckoo’s Nest institutional setting. It protects the people on the outside, but it’s strange and combustible inside. The genre is like a haunted-house movie with a bunch of hormonal teenagers. We haven’t seen it as a superhero movie whose genre is more like The Shining than 'we’re teenagers let’s save the world.'"
I would've loved for it to have a satirical horror tone similar to 2011's Detention, because I think the franchise could use more humor. The whole thing with the students being locked away in an institution to protect the outside world doesn't make much sense (Isn't that the entire point of Xavier's school?? You mean they're more dangerous than Jean Grey or Cyclops??), but trust Kinberg has a rational explanation.
New Mutants opens April 13th 2018. [Variety]
