Thursday, 20th Century Fox released the first trailer and poster while officially launching social media campaigns for May 15, 2020’s The Woman in the Window, the Amy Adams suspense-thriller based on the 2018 bestselling novel.
Normally such an event would go unreported by Newsarama, but in this case it reminded us of question we have been keeping track of and waiting on an answer for – when will the marketing campaign for director Josh Boone’s The New Mutants begin?
Of the ten 2020 films on Disney-Fox’s collective release calendar from January through early July, April 3’s The New Mutants is now the only film yet to have a marketing campaign of any degree launched. That ten-film slate includes five films scheduled for release after The New Mutants, among them May 1’s Black Widow from Disney/Marvel Studios and Fox’s own Ryan Reynolds-starrer Free Guy, the campaign for which was launched at Comic Con Experience in Brazil earlier this month despite having a July 3 release date.
A sixth, The King’s Man, due for release on September 18, has also launched a full marketing campaign that includes two trailers, but that’s partly because the film was previously scheduled for release on November 18, 2019 and then later February 14, 2020 and was only pushed back to September last month.
But wait, you ask, doesn’t The New Mutants already have a trailer and poster? The answer is yes to both, but requires some context.
The first (and only) New Mutants trailer was released on October 13, 2017 when the film originally had an April 13, 2018 release date. The one and only poster was released in December of that same year with the April date and was later updated with a new release date of August 2, 2019, the last of four changes in release prior to Disney acquiring Fox’s film assets. And that ‘8.2.19’ version of the poster still lives on Fox’s official Movies website (which despite being updated Thurday for The Woman in the Window lists the release date as “Coming Soon to Theaters”) and The New Mutants social media accounts, none of which have been updated since early 2018.
The film has had a long, troubled history, which includes reports of reshoots that added a new character, schedule delays, confusion by cast members as to its status and reports of Disney not being impressed with the film it acquired, despite the studio giant officially placing it on its schedule for April 3, 2020 last May.
Most recently, actor Charlie Heaton (Sam Guthrie/Cannonball) reportedly told attendees of Manchester’s For the Love of Sci-Fi convention that the film is coming out “next year.”
Boone has not publicly commented on the film for some time; his last Instagram post on the topic being nearly two years old.
While there were reports over the summer of positive test screenings of a new cut of the film, given the film’s history it seems likely Fox-Disney would want to start fresh with a new trailer, a new poster, and updated-if-not-completely-relaunched social media campaigns, but as of now only remnants of its pre-Disney life remain fossilized on the internet.
While Fox has not responded to Newsarama’s inquiries about the film, for its part Disney confirmed this week The New Mutants still appears on their schedule for April 3, though they did not provide information as to when a new trailer will debut.
Watch this space.