With Marvel building up the world of its obvious X-Men replacements, The Inhumans, on Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. and in the upcoming Inhumans movie, Fox can comfortably sit back and not worry about having to make any Spider-Man-esque deals that will force it to share the movie versions of the merry mutants with Marvel any time soon. Surely in honor of this—and the success of X-Men: First Class and Days Of Future Past—Fox has decided to start leaning on the X-Men brand to see if it can squeeze out some more movies about kids with superpowers. There’s already X-Men: Apocalypse, Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool, and another Wolverine movie, but now Deadline is reporting that a fourth film—called The New Mutants—is also in the works.
Presumably based on the Marvel Comics super-teams of the same name, The New Mutants will reportedly focus on “a new crop of mutant characters born with special powers.” That, as usual, doesn’t tell us anything, so it’s not clear if these New Mutants will be any of the New Mutants featured in the New Mutants comics, if they’ll all be totally new creations, or what connection—if any—they’ll have to the main series of X-Men movies.
One thing we do know—or, rather, the one thing we do know—is that The New Mutants will be directed by The Fault In Our Stars’ Josh Boone. This seems like a safe choice for the studio, since The Fault In Our Stars made a bunch of money and helped turn some young people into bigger stars, both of which would be a good for a movie about (we assume) younger X-Men than the normal series. However, as Deadline points out, Boone’s schedule is pretty busy. He’s set to direct the movie reboot of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles books, and a new adaptation of Stephen King’s The Stand, which, lest we forget, is actually going to be four movies. All of this means that—assuming Fox’s spotlight-heart is shining on Boone—The New Mutants is probably pretty far off. But, hey, at least this means there will be more comic book movies in our future!