Maisie Williams may have denied it, but many fans feel that 21st Century Fox’s ten-month delay in releasing The New Mutants is a direct result of the studio’s request for additional scenes to be filmed.
Over the past couple of months, reports from a number of source cited different reasons for the reshoots. It’s unclear whether it was deliberate, but actress Anya Taylor-Joy (Magik) recently confirmed one of the stories when she told The Playlist that the reshoots threw a new character into the mix.
Taylor-Joy admitted that the studio's decision to push back the movie’s release disappointed her as much as it did the fans:
Well, the only thing that I could say, without being in trouble, is that it being delayed is disappointing – frustrating, in fact. Because we were all very excited for it to be released on April 13th, and I don't mean that it’s just disappointing for me. I'm sure there are a lot of other fans who were looking forward to seeing it.
Taylor-Joy then did a quick about-face to defend the delay, and in doing so, spilled the beans about why the studio scrapped an in-process marketing campaign to announce that The New Mutants will be released nearly a year later than originally planned:
I do think that there is a great responsibility to make sure the movie is done right, and that we deliver the fans something that they can all feel happy and excited about. So I don't think it being delayed is a bad thing, because it's definitely more important to make sure that we get it right than to rush to make a date. So, hopefully, all of these reshoots and the additional, new character will give the fans an altogether satisfactory, wonderful product.
Based on Taylor-Joy’s comments, we can assume that she may be confirming more than one rumor by apparently implying that Fox’s reaction to The New Mutants was less than positive. An early rumor suggested that audience response to a test screening was decent, but not great. According to the same rumor, the studio felt that the movie wasn’t scary enough.
It's possible that in addition to introducing a new character, Josh Boone saw the reshoots as an opportunity to add elements of horror to the not-scary-enough film.
