The New Mutants Director Confirms Film's Same-Sex Love Story

20th Century Studios‘ last X-Men film The New Mutants has certainly undergone a lot of challenges before it has been given its final release date. That’s why the film’s two-year delay has brought a lot of speculations as to what the story will be and the most recent one was that the Josh Boone-directed film would be featuring a same-sex love story among its main characters.

Speaking with EW, Boone along with screenwriter Knate Lee addressed the rumor by confirming that the long-awaited film will indeed feature a romance between Games of Thrones alum Maisie Williams’ Rahne Sinclair/Wolfsbane and Blu Hunt’s Danielle Moonstar/ Mirage. This will be the first X-Men film that will feature a same-sex love story between two lead characters with Boone and Lee describing the relationship as “beautiful love story…It’s sort of the spine and focus of some of the character-driven stuff in the film.”

Maisie Williams also teased how the film will give justice to the bond that she and Hunt’s characters have in the comics. “Rahne and Dani have a telepathic connection in the comics, and so we just wanted to extend that in the film and put that within reality. If they really could understand each other on that level, then you’d probably end up falling in love with that person.”

“It’s not really a story about these two characters understanding their sexuality,” Williams added. “It’s not centered around that and they don’t really necessarily label it. No one else does either and no one really questions it.”

However, even though The New Mutants will be the first X-Men film to feature a major same-sex love story, it won’t be the first to include a LGBTQ+ couple in a superhero film with Deadpool 2 introducing minor characters Negasonic Teenage Warhead and Yukio as girlfriends.

20th Century Studios in association with Marvel Entertainment presents The New Mutants, an original horror thriller set in an isolated hospital where a group of young mutants is being held for psychiatric monitoring. When strange occurrences begin to take place, both their new mutant abilities and their friendships will be tested as they battle to try and make it out alive.

The film stars Anya Taylor-Joy (Split, The Witch) as Magik and Maisie Williams (Game of Thrones, gen:LOCK) as Wolfsbane, with Henry Zaga (13 Reasons Why) as Sunspot, Blu Hunt as Dani Moonstar, and Stranger Things’ Charlie Heaton as Cannonball.

The film is scheduled to finally hit the theaters on April 3.

The New Mutants adapts the monthly comic book series of the same name that launched in 1982. Created by Chris Claremont and Bob McLeod, The New Mutants follows on a group of teenage mutants as heroes in training in the Marvel Universe. The feature is expected to be a departure from the sci-fi-action spectacle of other X-Men films and is instead being described as a “Stephen King meets John Hughes”-style horror movie.

In November 2017, ComingSoon.net exclusively revealed a leaked concept animatic from the film, which features Wolfsbane, Magic, and Cannonball facing the Demon Bear.