‘Stranger Things’ star Charlie Heaton says ‘New Mutants’ is a ‘horror X-Men movie’ ‘scarier’ than other superhero films

Back when Fox announced The New Mutants, fans learned that embrace the horror elements of the team’s comic book adventures. Now with planned re-shoots, the same theme was mentioned, justifying the delay to 2019, but Charlie Heaton confirms the horror elements.

“It’s basically about these mutants in a facility for damaged mutants. It’s a story about these characters coming to grips with who they are and it’s a horror X-Men movie, which we haven’t seen before. I feel like, for an X-Men movie, yeah, I think they’re going full-fledged horror,” the Stranger Things star said of the film.

“Without saying too much — I really don’t want to give away too much what it’s about, it’s very under wraps — but it is, in terms of anything we’ve seen in the X-Men world, it definitely is a horror film. It’s scarier than anything we’ve seen in that genre.”

Director Josh Boone had pitched the studio a trilogy of horror films and the teaser footage confirmed as much with Boone saying it was difficult getting the PG-13 rating.

“This movie is probably the hardest PG-13 ever made. I mean, we’ve pushed it,” Boone said, during his interview with Empire Magazine. “The horror is pretty dark, but there’s also an emotional core, too. If I can scare you and make you cry: that’s the goal.”

Boone has said “New Mutants absolutely takes place in the same universe as X-Men, Logan and Deadpool” amd pitched three films to Fox: “We brought it to Fox as a trilogy of films, really all based on that long run by [Bill] Sienkiewicz, and kind of incorporates some stuff from later issues in the ’80s. These are all going to be horror movies, and they’re all be their own distinct kind of horror movies. This is certainly the ‘rubber-reality’ supernatural horror movie. The next one will be a completely different kind of horror movie. Our take was just go examine the horror genre through comic book movies and make each one its own distinct sort of horror film. Drawing from the big events that we love in the comics.”

As far as Heaton, he’s cast as Cannonball: “Sam comes from Kentucky, and he’s kind of a working-class boy, and he has the ability to project himself through the sky like a cannonball.”

The film also stars Maisie Williams (Game of Thrones) as Wolfsbane, Anya Taylor-Joy (Split) as Magik, Henry Zaga (Teen Wolf) as Sunspot, Blu Hunt as Mirage, and Alice Braga as Dr. Cecilia Reyes.

New Mutants arrives in theaters on August 2, 2019.