So, information has been released that the apparent title of the New Mutants movie that's currently in production will be called "X-Men: The New Mutants", which is sort of a silly name because it would be like calling a film "The Avengers: The Young Avengers", however I assume that the layman may not know that the New Mutants are connected to the X-Men, so, whatever.

What has also been released, though not completely confirmed, is that the film may be a continuation of X-Men Apocalypse instead of a spin off.

That is particularly one grievance I have with the Fox X-Men films. The fact that though while period piece movies are cool, the timeline is now weird and messed up and it gets increasingly more difficult to track what happened when and what is considered canon. I think the New Mutants just having their continuity like the Deadpool film would be a better idea overall. The X-Men franchise should just be different stories in different realities so one film's director doesn't get bogged down by what other contributors are doing.

But, what really gives me good feels about this movie is this quote by director, Josh Booone...

"We had loved Bill Sienkiewicz’s run with Chris Claremont that had Demon Bear. It was really dark, interesting, and different from the typical X-Men stories that we had read. After I made The Fault in Our Stars, we made Fox a comic book. It walked them through a trilogy of New Mutant films that would build on each other. We used this program called Comic Life, and took all the images we had loved from the series and strung them together to show them the movie we wanted to do. We brought it to Simon and he really liked it.

We’ve been going for the past year and a half to get it ready, and I’m about to go location scout and we have a release date now."

Bill Sienkewicz work on the New Mutants book along with Claremont was probably the pinnacle of Claremonts work on X-Men comic books in the 80s, so this guy knows the deal.

Just curious as to what could facilitate the trilogy as the New Mutants, despite only being 100 issues before being amended into X-Force, had quite a plethora of villains. Viper and Silver Samurai were recurring threats, Selene, Emma Frost, the Hellions, though, the Hellions were more like friendly rivals form another school than they were actual "villains", Magus, the Demon Bear, Legion sort of, S'ym sort of. I try not to count Simonson's work on the New Mutants because while canon, you know, it sucked.

I am assuming Magik will probably be the break out character in the film and I imagine they might go with the story line where Magus transformed Limbo with the TO virus. I am not saying that was a real big story or anything, but, it tied up multiple arcs with the antagonists of more than one character and it built up to Inferno...in fact, culminating in an "Inferno" type story might be pretty cool. I mean, the only real big arcs from the Sienkiwicz run are the Legion arc, the Demon Bear Saga and some random weird stories with Cloak and Dagger, which were about drug addiction if I remember right, Sunspot fighting in an arena, and Claremont recreating Kitty's fairy tale theater with Wolfsbane being the one who imagines it instead.

Since Legion is getting a TV series his inclusion may be off limits. So, it may leave the director to, while being inspired by the Sienkewicz/Claremont stuff, branch out and do stuff that isn't particular to that run.

I agree that it would be better if it didn't try to bounce off of Apocalypse, but I can also see them wanting the X-Men and the New Mutants in the same time line, so they can crossover. Seeing crossovers for adaptions like, Mutant Massacre, Inferno, and X-Tinction Agenda would be great.

I'd be all for crossovers based of those events that @invain just mentioned.

I think I said it before but considering the zombie genre that's currently prevalent and the Vampire thing that's slowed somewhat but still going, having a movie featuring Selene would seem to be a good way to go as well. Maybe have some cult that's recruiting and/or kidnapping and brainwashing young mutant girls and have it be linked to Selene and a secret society she's built. This could introduce Magma and maybe even lead to Necrosha or at least an adaptation of it.

Of course visiting Limbo with Illyana and having that lead to OR tie in to an Inferno story would be huge but would definitely need the X-men movies to pick up other parts of the story for a proper tie in.

As far as Legion goes it might be kinda cool to tie him in with the New Mutants. Maybe have some sort of adaptation of the Mike Carey arc in Legacy when his personalities started to escape. Maybe you could have the team globe trotting trying to stop those different personalities and even include Karma, Magik, and Moonstar going into his mind in some way. Or maybe he alters or warps reality and we get Age of X as somewhat of a tie in to the other X-men characters showing different ones in a different light similar to how that story did.

Even having the team become Xforce and deal with the Armageddon Man or whatever could be fun.

Seems like they could be pretty versatile with the directions they could take this.

Continuing both franchises, having different stories in differing timelines is fine by me. Better opportunity to tell more stories without worrying about what the next director is doing, or abiding by any restrictions.

That being said, I'm stoked for New Mutants. I hope it delivers.

I never understand why people pine for these crossovers. Mutant Massacre wasn't a heavily foreshadowed event or anything, Simonson and Claremont just claimed they had a crossover planned to avoid editorial making one for them and came up with it on whim. It really only works if you have relationships and concepts established prior to the event. It didn't really have a plot or anything other than the Morlocks are getting killed by a group of Glam Rock influenced psychos. X-Tinction Agenda was just really early 90's Liefeld, Lee era inspired action schlock. They would be sort of weird choices for film adaptions.

I mentioned Inferno because you could do a version of it without the X-Men and it could still work. N'astirh trying to merge earth with limbo and the demons of Limbo being corrupted by Magus are elements you could make a film out of with just the New Mutants.

You don't really need to include the X-Men though. The New Mutants part of the Inferno story line was actually supposed to be more of a culmination for the New Mutants and Magik than it was for the X-Men. It's just that Simonson didn;t have the writing talent that Claremont did and didn't have as much interest in Magik and used the story as a way to write her out instead of just having her become full on evil Darkchylde, which I believe was the original intention. You could totally get away with reinterpreting Inferno without the X-Men/Madelyne Pryor story.

I like your modification for including Selene with her being some sort of cult leader, though, her being a literal vampire was never a big part of her character, her being able to drain peoples life forces and controlling inorganic material was. So, you wouldn't have to worry about having Zombies and Vampires.

While I sort of like Legion I don't think that out of all the things you can play with the New Mutants continuity that he would be one of the most pressing concepts to adapt. A plot with him as the antagonist would simply devolve into "hey, we have stop some powerful mutant" which has been the plot of like 4 or 5 X-Men and many other super hero films already

@cattlebattle:

"Mutant Massacre wasn't a heavily foreshadowed event or anything"

Which makes it ideal for a movie.

"It didn't really have a plot or anything other than the Morlocks are getting killed by a group of Glam Rock influenced psychos."

That sounds rad. Imagine the spooky sewer labyrinths, dingy costumes and creepy prosthetics for the Morlocks.

If the next X-Men film is still set in the 80s, the slasher-like villains and crust punk aesthetic would be perfect.

Anyway, Inferno would be cool, but I'm worried how limbo and its denizens might look. Will everything be CGI? Will they go for the classic fantasy look, or something more contemporary? Will it fit with what's been established in previous films? Like you said, if these were standalone movies this wouldn't be an issue.

Depending on the success of New Mutants, they could really blow up in popularity. It'll be weird seeing characters like Magik and Wolfsbane on billboards and shit. Kind of exciting, I guess.

Well, I didn't mean it like that....well, I did, but I didn't. I meant that it wasn't foreshadowed at all in a way of saying it was a shallow story and just a spur of the moment idea. There is no real undertone or message to the crossover, granted, there is the neat first confrontation between Wolverine and Sabertooth where you learn about the subtleties of when it's ok to kill....but otherwise....meh.

Admittedly yeah, gutter punk chic vs glam rockers would be pretty cool to look at....as well as the dark sewer environments, however, it just seems like a film based on this would go the same way as most Marvel movies where it's just a bunch of people in costumes fighting.

I wish that they would go the route of someone like Guillermo Del Toro and use puppets and creature effects so Limbo looks like a Labyrinth, Dark Crystal inspired acid trip in some manner but, we know better and they will probably just use boundless CGI. Because, and I am not sure about this, but I think CGI is cheaper. I actually hate too much CGI. I only mentioned Inferno as a possible crescendo to the trilogy because of the scale of the story....I mean, it would be weird if the the movie started out acknowledging Magik and her connection to demons, the Demon Bear, having Warlock, a space alien, and the finale would just be them having a friendly encounter with the Hellions. It's completely possible that Limbo might not even be in the film and Magik is tied to the some reality where the Demon Bear comes from or something.

I am pretty sure most of the mythology will be reinterpreted anyways, my point was just that Boone directly refers to the Sienkewicz run on New Mutants, and while the art is amazing, he only works on the book for roughly 20 issues if that and, as I mentioned in the OP, there isn't much to adapt a film out of in there after the Demon Bear stuff.....the Legion arc is good but that character is possibly off limits. You have the Cloak and Dagger story where Sunspot and Wolfsbane become addicts and Claremont over exhausts speech balloons by having Xavier give lectures on morality, but I have a hard time imagining that story will get adapted.

Of course, there was the issue where Dani almost gets raped and is saved by her pegasus and Magneto tries to show her attackers, who are young men, the error of their ways by threatening them with death. There is always hope for that one.

@cattlebattle: Yeah but doing that with Legion doesn't have to devolve into that same old plot. A good script writer could make it much more complex. And again having his many personalities escape or whatever could be secondary to a main plot. Plus how complex do you really want to get I mean we are talking about movie audience who largely are who Marvel seems to be trying to cater too in their comic books these days. So really if they like the current crop of comics than just having the generic powerful mutant that we have to stop would seem to be right up the so called alley.

I would say having the Demon Bear connected to Magik like you suggested in some way or even Legion or some sort of a combination of those would be a nice connective way to tell an interesting adaptation.

I even thought an extension on the Shadowking's possession of Karma could be played out more even as a secondary plot in a movie. Along with what you mentioned about Sunspot and Rahne being forced into being drug addicts and introducing Cloak and Dagger (probably have to change that if Cloak and Dagger are Disney owned). All that tied together in some way would have a team not at full strength facing overwhelming odds and otherworldly threats which would play well off alternate reality settings and the I can't trust my eyes trippy vibe some may be looking for. Also it's quite indicative of how things work these days in most people's personal lives, in that when trials come it's normally not at a time when we are our strongest. It could send a message that it's not time to give up but to push through which considering the anxiety disorders and suicide issues plaguing the youth today, might be a worthwhile message.

I do agree about not particularly having to include the X-men in an Inferno story but for the sake of doing something different on the X-men side of the movies that's why I mentioned it. I mean really the way fox twist plots around (I. E. First Class) It might be somewhat interesting at least for those of us who don't like the Maddie Pryor as a Jean Grey to establish Pryor and Sinister as villains for the New Mutants in some way. Although just keeping it about Illyana would be good too, though it would certainly feel somewhat like a Dark Phoenix type of thing and again we gotta stop a powerful mutant.

I just think the New Mutants could explore darker tones than just the action plots and big names (I.E. Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique and Halle Berry as Storm) that seem to be the focus of the X-men movies instead of a good plot. That's not to say that every development was bad

Because they're the most famous stories. Personally, I think the original Genosha story with Wolverine, Rogue, and Carol was much better than X-Tinction Agenda, but considering that X-Tinction Agenda is more popular, it is more likely to get a movie.

Crossovers can eliminate the #1 thing that fans like to complain about when talking about the X-Men movie: Their favorite characters not getting enough screen time. Much like people didn't care about the glorified cameos in Civil, maybe because the people who cameod in that movie had/will have their chances to shine in other movies.

Mutant Massacre wasn't a heavily foreshadowed event or anything, Simonson and Claremont just claimed they had a crossover planned to avoid editorial making one for them and came up with it on whim. It really only works if you have relationships and concepts established prior to the event. It didn't really have a plot or anything other than the Morlocks are getting killed by a group of Glam Rock influenced psychos.

I think Mutant Massacre would make a good movie, but it would most likely be a X-Men movies with New Mutants only having a minor role.

X-Tinction Agenda was just really early 90's Liefeld, Lee era inspired action schlock. They would be sort of weird choices for film adaptions.

It did go a little overboard with the 90s sci-fi, but I think a loose adaption of it would be a good way to introduce Genosha. Lose like Days of Future Past or The Wolverine.

I really wish people who cared about the x-men would stop going to these movies so they would lose money.

@teerack: The movie are a breath of fresh air, after what the comics had been doing with Xavier for the past several years.

I'd prefer if fox didn't make money on the movie so that they would actually sell them back to disney and the comics would become better as they would probably add more focus back to the x-men like it used to be.

@teerack: I can understand where you are coming from. But they seem to be loosing their gripe lately.

Given how bad Marvel comics are right now, what makes you think the x-books would be any better?

They wouldn't need to change everything for diversity if the x-men were still their main focus.

It's a good idea to merge plots but the the story with Shadow King was just sort of a muddled Claemontian mind control plot that served as a way to bring Storm, who was AWOL at the time, back into the fold. It was enjoyable because Claremont was a good writer, but I don't think it would be the best source material to adapt.

Agreeably, you could take any story from the New Mutants that were sort of goofy and restructure them into a more serious plot but I just mentioned Inferno because because I know two characters from high fantasy backgrounds, Magik and Warlock, will be in the first film, and Warlock was a Sinkiewicz/Claremont creation and Inferno saw the culmination of lingering stories seeing that N'astirh was empowered by the TO virus from when Magus was there. I am thinking they will likely set up the Demon Bear as some sort of demon manifestation that escaped Limbo and plagued North America, hence why the Cheyenne tribes were aware of it and told stories of it, and why Dani is linked to it, then in the second film, perhaps Magus is the villain and Selene shows up as the secondary villain and makes a bargain with N'astirh instead of Madelyne Pryor and maybe she attempts to sacrifice Magma instead of Maddie attempting to sacrifice Nathan, which ultimately leads to an Inferno type story......I am pretty sure I am wrong about 100% of that though.

I wouldn't mind seeing them take on some real world social issues but usually when super hero comics or super hero movies do this, it's every heavy handed and at times cringy.

True, the original Genosha story is a lot better, but, it's not that great either. Claremont was a bleeding heart liberal and he essentially wrote the original Genosha as an allegory for South Africa so the premise is basically Rogue and Wolverine walking around being disgusted at how oppression looks and the other X-Men just beat people up for like 3 issues. I get that a lot of people like it because of the real world context, but I was never truly amazed by it. The problem with super hero comics tackling real world politics is that never account for the fact that super heroes solve most of their problems by punching and causing massive amounts of property damage, their reality is never observed through the lens of the average person, it's just the world view seen through some jacked up, good looking people with super powers fighting to save the global citizen as written by a liberal writer....anyways, I am getting off track here....

I completely understand why people like crossovers and yeah, it is a good way to see more of your favorite characters, the problem is creative freedom gets restricted when decisions for what happens in your film is negated because some other director already established something. It kind of defeats the point of film making in a way, or, at the very least, turns the film maker into some sort of yes man on an assembly line than an actual creative force in bringing something to life..that is exactly the reason why many very talented directors (Edgar Wright, Jon Favreau, Ken Branagh, several others) have stepped away from comic films with a sour taste in their mouth. I mean, if you would have had all this shared universe stuff from the outset you would have never had Tim Burton's Batman and Singers X-Men, two film series that were instrumental in reinterpreting the franchise for a new generation of fans, and you definitely wouldn't have had Nolan's Batman films. You get my point.

Don't be "that guy".

@cattlebattle: What's heavy handed about that. It's allegorical..... never mind.

Not too bad of an idea for an adaptation with the lead up to Inferno.

There are alot of ways it could and still tell a great story. Just seems like we as fans seem to care more so than some of the writers these days. I guess we'll see what happens. But there are plenty of top notch ideas in this thread

I agree that it should be set in this day and age like Deadpool. It's pretty pointless to have an universe moving in past (Apocalypse) actual days (Deadpool) and future (Logan).

Instead all should be set at their year of releases. Having a prequel is fine, but when we're talking about a cinematic universe, lots of movies set in past are just... no. Like, what was the point on making Apocalypse in the 80s? Deadpool & DoFP shows the future of the universe, and Apocalypse cleary didn't built a "better world from the ashes of their world". It's pretty pointless to have the universe moving foward in so many timelines.

@scarietwitch: Apocalypse was set in the 80s because the X-Men were teenagers when they debuted in the comics.