After a very long and bumpy road, The New Mutants will hit theaters in two weeks. You believe that, right? I mean…why wouldn’t you? It’s not like there’s anything going on right now that could delay the movie yet again. No sir, no ma’am. While other movies have been pushed around in recent weeks, The New Mutants has clung to its August 28 release, even releasing a cheeky new teaser during Comic-Con. And now, Disney has just sent out a letter to exhibitors telling them they can start selling tickets for the film starting Tuesday, August 18.
Oh, The New Mutants. Where do we even begin with you? The X-Men spin-off has become something of a punchline – a movie shuffled around so many times that it almost seems like a joke. The film was set to open in April 2018 only to then be delayed to February 2019. It was delayed again to August 2019 before being pushed once more, this time to April 2020.
And then came the coronavirus. Disney, who now owns the film after acquiring Fox, pulled New Mutants from a release schedule only to then drop it onto August 28. Ever since that announcement, however, there’s been an assumption that Disney would end up delaying the movie yet again. After all, the coronavirus hasn’t gone anywhere, especially in the United States. Others have hoped for Disney to bite the bullet and just release the film onto Disney+, but that’s highly unlikely. Why? Well, because New Mutants has been kicking around so long that it’s very likely the original contract stipulates that when the film heads to home media, it has to debut first on HBO, as that used to be the old set-up for Fox movies. I’ve heard rumblings that contractually, New Mutants can’t premiere on Disney+ until 2022, which is why Disney is in no hurry to push it directly to streaming.
With all that in mind, Disney is still swearing up and down that New Mutants will keep its August 28 theatrical date. Per Variety, the House of Mouse sent out a “lengthy email” to movie theaters telling them they can start selling New Mutants the morning of August 18. A theater insider even wrote to Variety: “It’s for sure opening August 28th!”
So…will it? Currently, 1,309 of the 6,021 movie theaters in the United States are open, so I suppose New Mutants will be able to play at those select locations. But I continue to have serious doubts, primarily because the odds of the coronavirus miraculously going away in two weeks is highly unlikely, no matter what our mutant carnival huckster POTUS says.
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