Wait… is The New Mutants now part of the MCU?

We’ve spoken a lot recently about The New Mutants and its ridiculously long and frustrating journey to the big screen. Delays, rewrites, reshoots, on-set tensions, a studio takeover etc., this troubled movie production had it all. But now, following that last point as Fox was bought over by Disney, director Josh Boone’s The New Mutants (and it actually is his original, horror-centric cut of the film) is finally being released by the House of Mouse. But it’s been so long, that the film is now coming out after X-Men: Dark Phoenix which was supposed to the final instalment in Fox’s X-Men franchise which The New Mutants is a part of. But is it actually?

Lots of doubts got thrown onto that assumption over the weekend when D23, Disney’s official fan club, released its latest newsletter with a very interesting detail added:

There’s a seriously electrifying new addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and it comes in the form of the latest from Twentieth Century Fox and Marvel Entertainment.

New Mutants is an original horror thriller set in an isolated hospital, where a group of young mutants is being held for psychiatric monitoring. When strange occurrences begin to take place, both their new mutant abilities and their friendships will be tested as they battle to try and make it out alive.

Wait, what? New addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe?! While Disney/Marvel are technically releasing this film now, there have been zero hints thus far that The New Mutants wouldn’t be more than just an oddity, an overdue remnant of an already defunct movie universe. This newsletter though, makes it sound like somehow this is the first part of Marvel boss Kevin Feige’s plan to introduce mutants into the MCU. This is isn’t the most unexpected idea as there has been talk that while Disney gave Boone back creative control of this production, rumours swirled back in September last year that Marvel had also recut the film to remove overt links to Fox’s X-Men films and add some of that Marvel polish. Could this be the result?

We don’t know because shortly after the contents of this D23 newsletter started making the rounds and drawing headlines, Disney immediately removed all mention of The New Mutants from their newsletter. So was this an early accidental leak, or some silly PR person messing up and getting confused by the fact that this is a Marvel Comics property being released by Disney but it’s not a Marvel Studios film? I’m inclined to think it may be the latter (in which case, heads are probably going to roll), but you never know. Following that new trailer last week, The New Mutants had already started looking intriguing again, and now it’s even more so.

The New Mutants is scheduled for release 1 April 2020.

Last Updated: January 13, 2020