X-Men Spinoff The New Mutants Movie Announced by Fox

The New Mutants will join the X-Men, Deadpool, Wolverine, and Gambit as part of Fox's mutant cinematic universe. Josh Boone (The Fault in Our Stars) will direct. Boone will also co-write the film with Knate Gawley.

“We’re so excited to explore this new part of the X-Men universe, and so excited to do it with Josh, who is uniquely suited to tell this story about young characters,” said Simon Kinberg in a statement.

The New Mutants were the first of Marvel's X-Men spinoffs in the comics, dealing with a younger crop of gifted youngsters as the core X-Men cast expanded and aged. No word on what mutants would be included in this movie, but characters like Cannonball, Sunspot, Wolfsbane (yep, a werewolf), and Warlock (a techno-organic android) would make tremendous visuals on screen. What's more, the New Mutants would allow for a more racially diverse cast than we've seen in most X-Men movies so far.

The book was also the precursor to X-Force, which is another X-property that Fox has been developing for some time (with Kick-Ass 2 director Jeff Wadlow on board). There's been no public movement on X-Force in some time, and it's unclear if this affects plans for that film.

Josh Boone is a hot property at the moment. He's set to direct the reboot of Anne Rice's The Vampire Chroniclesnext, and he's in line for another massive genre project, an adaptation of Stephen King's The Stand. It's not clear how The New Mutantswill fit into his schedule.

There's no word on a release date yet. Fox has reserved July 13th, 2018 for one of its Marvel properties. Given Mr. Boone's other commitments, that might be a little ambitious for The New Mutants, but you never know.