‘The New Mutants’ May Be Headed to Hulu
Fox’s final X-Men spin-off, The New Mutants, may potentially be sent off to Hulu as a result of the Disney-Fox merger. There were existing plans to extensively reshoot as much as half of the movie (leading to two massive delays), but the current word is that they’re not going to happen.
In a Vanity Fair report on the Disney-Fox merger that’s mere days from completion, the article makes note that it’s seeming more and more likely that Fox’s final X-Men movie, The New Mutants, will end up being sent off to a streaming service due to it not being designed as an event film in the same vein as Avengers: Endgame or Spider-Man: Far From Home. While this is by no means confirmation, it does seem to be the most likely option to go to a streaming service:
“…Smaller films initially slated to be part of Fox’s theatrical-release calendar are likely to be shuttled to Disney’s new streaming service, which is set to launch in late 2019. One likely casualty, observers guess, will be Josh Boone’s Marvel spin-off, The New Mutants, starring Game of Thrones heroine Maisie Williams. Its moderate budget, younger cast, and smaller spectacle make it the perfect title to send directly to consumers.”
While Disney+ is hinted at as being a potential destination for The New Mutants, I’m just not seeing it. The film is explicitly shown to have a dark, horror-focused tone that seems at odds with what Disney+ is set to be all about, and the movie itself is going to be part of a setting that is almost certainly going defunct by the end of this year, as Marvel Studios look to hard-reboot all of Fox’s IP with the exception of Deadpool (which will likely keep Ryan Reynolds in a soft-reboot). Hulu seems like the much more likely fit since Fox already has a stake in that service, and Marvel Studios seem to want Disney+ to be the premiere location for all the Marvel content that really matters to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (and Josh Boone’s horror-teen-superhero-movie won’t be).
However, don’t count out the chances of The New Mutants getting a theatrical run just yet. The film is still slated to release in an IMAX format later this year, which is a point in its favor since that format is a big deal both domestically and abroad. Another point worth mentioning is that, since Hulu is currently a USA-only service, sending it to that streaming platform would cost the movie its international audience. They could work out a deal to temporarily license the film to Netflix internationally, or give the movie an international run in contrast to how Paramount approached Annihilation, but having a plan-of-attack is so much easier if the movie goes to theaters around the globe to begin with. Hopefully, we’ll find out more about the situation soon, with CinemaCon around the corner; if it’s not there, then you can easily expect to see the movie on a streaming service or services.
The New Mutants will be released on August 2, 2019.
Grant Davis is a freelance writer who has covered entertainment news for more than seven years. His articles have frequently appeared in Star Wars News Net as well as as other entertainment-related websites. As someone who grew up on Star Wars and comic book movies, he’s completely thrilled with the current era of genre entertainment.
