Announced by Deadline out of the blue this afternoon, FOX has hired director Josh Boone to make a New Mutants moving, likely spinning out of the ongoing X-Men franchise. Boone rose to prominence as director of the hugely popular The Fault in Our Stars movie, so he knows a thing or two about teenage drama.

Why not X-New-Mutants? Keep the brand alive!

New Mutants was a comic that first launched in the early 1980s as a spin-off of the X-Men. It was about a new class of young mutants at Charles Xavier’s mutant school, and introduced characters like Cannonball, Wolfsbane, Boom Boom, Cypher and a few others, many of whom have not been in the X-Men films yet.

There’s no word yet on characters or plot. So maybe some of those comic book accurate characters will debut, or considering the next film, X-Men: Apocalypse, is set in the 1980s, perhaps this new film will spin off of the teenage mutants introduced in that movie. We’re going to meet teenage versions of Cyclops, Jean Grey and Jubilee, among likely others. So if I had to guess, I bet FOX is going to take those actors (including Game of Thrones’ Sophie Turner) and give them their own movie. I highly doubt FOX is going to be too comic book accurate to the original New Mutants title when they can just sign Sophie Turner and her comrades up for another film.

Suffice to say, between this movie, Apocalypse, Deadpool and that supposed X-Force movie, FOX is never, ever letting go of the X-Men franchise. I’m largely OK with that.

——————–