The release of the The New Mutants movie, the last installment in Fox's X-Men franchise, has been delayed for years now, leaving fans with only hints and teases as to what the film could have been like. The latest tease comes from the project's director Josh Boone himself, who, according to the Twitter handle @NewMutantsUp, has confirmed that a couple of major X-Men were originally supposed to cameo.

"Josh Boone has confirmed that #NewMutants early draft would have featured the mutants in X-Mansion with Xavier (McAvoy) and Storm (Shipp) reprising their roles. The movie was also supposed to be in X-Men: Apocalypse timeline but that was later dropped to make it a standalone."

The connection between The New Mutants and the rest of the X-Men series has been a subject of debate ever since the project was first announced. Some said New Mutants was a part of the larger continuity, while others saw it as an entirely separate thing, with nothing to do with the other X-Men movies.

Now, it seems the early draft for The New Mutants placed the movie in a similar situation to the Deadpool series, which are connected to the other X-Men films through a few brief cameos by the mutant superhero team, but operates in its own reality disconnected with the events of the X-Men movies. So seeing Storm and Professor X would not have been out of the ordinary.

The New Mutants is billed as a straight-up horror flick instead of an action-adventure, and it's darker tone is said to be incompatible with the X-Men franchise. It is interesting to consider what the cameo by Professor X and Storm would have looked like, and the earlier film X-Men Origins: Wolverine might give us a hint.

In that film, young mutants imprisoned in a government facility were greeted by Professor X upon their escape and offered a place at his school for mutants. Something similar might have been planned for The New Mutants, which is also about a group of young mutants being imprisoned and experimented upon in a government facility. The movie might have ended with Professor X and Storm contacting the teens and bringing them to their school.

As it is, that plan appears to have been scrapped, along with any connections to X-Men: Apocalypse. Now the most tenuous relation The New Mutants might have to the larger X-Men universe might be in the form of one of the main characters Magik, who in the comics, is the younger sister of the X-Men member Colossus.

The New Mutants has had its release date pushed back yet again, and is currently expected to debut in theaters in August. Or not, if the theaters are still closed at that time. Meanwhile, the X-Men will be getting a fresh start in the MCU as they make their debut in the franchise over the next few years with a fresh cast of actors and backstory. Sadly, the Professor X cameo in The New Mutants would have been the last time we got to see James McAvoy in that role, but that is no longer possible.