Though not under ideal circumstances, The New Mutants has finally made its way to theaters. The seemingly cursed X-Men spin-off has arrived after literally years of delays. The final product hasn't been received particularly well so far. But is it that bad? According to some of the brass at Fox, yes it is, or at least was. So much so that the studio considered a complete reshoot, starting over from scratch.

To coincide with the movie's release a deep-dive report dug into the troubled development and production of director Josh Boone's Marvel Comics adaptation. Production originally took place in 2017 after a lengthy and painstaking script process. It is alleged that Boone rejected many studio notes, with a small army of uncredited writers coming in to help fix the script. Ultimately, Fox got a script that they felt comfortable enough shooting. A blend of teen horror and John Hughes.

Yet, the report notes that 20th Century Fox, in the days long before the Disney merger took hold, was radically unhappy with the initial cut. Amazingly, to the point that "the studio discussed throwing the entire movie out to 'start over' with a total reshoot." It is said that in post-production, one studio executive brought up that a complete do-over, in this case, wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, relative to the X-Men franchise. A high-ranking Fox executive reportedly said the following, according to unnamed sources close to the production.

"You could throw the movie out, start over, and it would still be the least expensive X-Men movie so far."

That is a miraculous claim. Especially considering some of the big action sequences we've seen in the trailers for The New Mutants. Even so, it seems Josh Boone truly did attempt to do something different and smaller in scale with the movie. Another source in the article provided some background info to back that up, saying the understanding, at least at the beginning, is that the movie was going to be done for a certain cost, much lower than that of a typical comic book movie.

"It was understood this was going to be X-Men at a price... Deadpool had come out and was such a hit. It was sort of like, 'What would an X-Men movie look like if it was hard-R, broke down some walls, was kind of meta, but it was also like a teen-horror flick with a John Hughes sensibility?'"

Ultimately, the hard-R bit did not pan out. Instead, after Disney inherited the movie as part of the Fox merger, they let Josh Boone come in and finish his cut. As Boone tells it, what we are seeing represents his vision, for better or for worse. Now it's a question of whether or not Disney can manage to make a profit, or if it will be yet another example of a flop they have to endure as part of the merger. The New Mutants is in theaters now. This news comes to us via Vulture.